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The Illusion of Time from Dismal Eyes… What I Learned from ITC (9)

2013 June 16 by macyafterlife

Editor’s note: This is a third fictional piece based on factual reports delivered through ITC contacts by people in spirit. These particular contacts address the more troubled realms, what I call the “dismal” worlds… sometimes called purgatory or the lower-astral planes. Spirits at this level are often caught up in the confused illusion of time and space.

So here I am, a dismal being… a name that, frankly, I find a little offensive. Life here isn’t all that “dismal,” really… at least it doesn’t seem that way to most of us. Millions of people in this world are involved in countless diverse “life styles”… some of which you on Earth might regard as rather bizarre… and, yes, dismal. But, then, it’s true of any “alien” culture that life styles often seem a little other-worldly.

Sure, there are those here who are trapped in tormented, hellish surroundings—folks who made some really bad choices during lifetime—but it’s a comparatively small number.

And sure, compared to those realms of light (many of us have at least some awareness of those paradise astral worlds and ethereal realms that are somehow beyond our grasp) things may seem to be a little unruly here. After all, we’re closer to your world in vibration, and so many of us are still immersed in terrestrial dramas.

Using the river metaphor of the previous articles, I guess you could say we live on the banks of the rapids. When we immerse ourselves in your illusion of time (and many of us do it often), it can be a pretty wild ride!

Here is a cross-section of reports from people at this level to give you an idea of what our lives are like.

  • At the hellish end of the spectrum are folks like Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the Auschwitz death camp during World War II. Tormented by remorse over his responsibility for the extermination of thousands of Polish Jews, Hoess was hanged for war crimes in 1947 and awakened in a spirit-world gas chamber with 65,000 of his victims amid cries, screams, and the death rattle of children… all blinded by ash and desperate for salvation. Fifty-six years of unrelenting, unimaginable horror, you may be thinking! Well, it’s not like that here. Yes, Rudolf is suffering, as are many of his victims. But it is not a long, drawn-out condition here as it would be in your world. It is simply a condition in which they are living at the moment. Well-executed prayers and forgiveness from your side could (and will someday) free them all instantly. Read more about Rudolf’s experience…
  • A great example of the illusory nature of time is the case of “Old Lucy,” an Australopithicus human who died 3.5 million years ago in Ethiopia. She’s still alive here in spirit, and she’s ostracized for her crazy behavior… but she’s really just lonely and desperately seeking loving feelings. Aren’t we all! Read more about Lucy’s fossils… and (at the end of the following link) her afterlife experience…
  • Lucy’s case was introduced to you, through ITC equipment of Adolf Homes in Germany, by Majo the Shaman, another interesting character over here, whom we believe was a Mongolian medicine man in 1283 Samarkand (a city in what today is called Uzbekistan). Since his death Majo (along with his followers) has become quite proficient at navigating through our world and interacting with your world. For what he lacks in tact, he compensates with a degree of wisdom. On one occasion he told your researcher Homes, “Many conscious minds come together in transparent, overlapping (and for you rather bizarre) predispositions that simply and plainly bring every contact with mind/spirit about. Your “normal” physical senses unfortunately are no longer in a position to do it, for the eyes are blind, the ears are deaf, and the mind benumbed (by material living, and so) we have little influence on your space-time make-up and structure.Read more about Majo the Shaman…
  • Another group over here that likes to make an impact on your world calls itself “Group 2109,” which relates to the year in your (“future”) world. You can tell they are from our (“dismal”) world by the arrogant, condescending quality of some of their ambiguous information. In one message to your researcher Homes, for example, they say, “Here 2109 to humans – you fools – elements claim reimbursement – viruses penetrate matter – beginning in Britannia – help not possible – an eye for an eye – forward to 4.11.22 Hamburg – Please take notification seriously – 2109 –jkyrdcbmjuhrtedcvv… contact interrupted.”Read more about Group 2109…
  • Group 2109 also choreographed the strange spirit communications to Ken Webster. You may recall that Ken’s the school teacher in Chester, England, who received messages on his computer in old English, from a spirit fellow named Thomas Harden, also known as Lukas Wainman. Harden (Wainman) had lived in the same house in Chester some four centuries earlier, in 1543, and was something of a criminal, under close scrutiny by the local sheriff. When he died, he remained stuck in the house… watching time pass by quickly around him as homeowners came and went over the years. Ken and his mediumistic girlfriend Debbie began to renovate the old house in 1984, and that’s when the “ghost” of Tom Harden began to get a little irked. In one computer message he said, “I wryte on behalthe of manye. Wot strange words thou speke… Thou art goodly man who hath fanciful woman who dwel in myne home… with lytes whiche devyll maketh. ‘Twas a greate cryme to hath bribed (stolen) myne house. L.W.”  Read more about Thomas Harden’s experiences through Ken Webster…
  • Yet another group over here calls itself FDL (Foederation des Lichtes, or Federation of the Light), whose information sometimes comes across on your side as rather bizarre and unsettling. I’m told that beings from the finer realms—Spirit Group Timestream and The Seven Ethereals, for example—go to great lengths to refine the information delivered to your world in a way that the messages are insightful, uplifting, and reassuring. Not so with the groups in my world, such as Majo’s group, Group 2109, and FDL. As I said, we tend to get caught up in your drama. :-)  Anyway, it’s FDL that choreographed a series of contacts from the spirit of a Greek woman named Konstantina Gilaidos, who claims to have died a horrible death in 1953 when US warships launched nuclear weapons on Greece. As you’re aware, no such attack occurred in your Earth history… but apparently the experiences are real to Konstantina. Whether her memory is of a life in a parallel world of Earth?… or something that “is yet to happen” in your future?… or simply the mischievous humor of our spirit groups?… again, the illusory nature of time and space is often difficult to pin down. Read more about the experiences of Konstantina Gilaidos…
  • And… talking about mischievousness… let’s close this article with a couple of cases reported in Germany in the 1980s. The “Chopper case” involves a dentist (Dr Bachseitz) and his pretty, young, sensitive dental assistant, Claudia Judenmann. The rasping, guttural voice of a man in spirit calling himself “Chopper” was emitted from the sinks and toilet bowls in the dentist’s office. The voice was often so loud that patients fled the office and passersby were terrified. The voice sometimes broke into telephone conversations or impinged itself silently on Claudia’s mind with sexual requests, promises, stupid jokes, and obscenities. The spirit is probably someone who was associated with the building during lifetime and is unaware that he died. Read more about the Chopper case here… and here….
  • Phone conversations between Manfred Boden and his girlfriend Ursula were often interrupted by spirit voices. The spirits at first weren’t malicious, but polite. They’d chide Manfred for his heavy drinking. Eventually the spirits became more mischievous, and they began to come through his computer with short text messages, for example: “I am here, you will die, Manfred, 1982 accident August 16, 1982. Yours, Klaus.” The supposed date of death came and went without incident, but both Boden and his girlfriend were badly unsettled by the spirits that got involved in the dramas of their lives. Read more about the experiences of Manfred Boden’s spirit intruders…

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What I Learned from ITC, the series:

1 Being sensitive in a harsh world
2 Controlling emotions
3 Leaving the family of man
4 How spirits navigate time and space
5 Hardships heighten the human experience
6 To establish a bridge
7 Grasping the illusion of time (ethereal view)
8 Grasping the illusion of time (astral view)

9 Grasping the illusion of time (dismal view)

Posted in After we die, what then?, Heaven and Earth, ITC, Other-worldly matters, Society and ethics, Spiritual realms | Leave a Comment »

The Illusion of Time from Astral Eyes… What I Learned from ITC (8)

2013 June 8 by macyafterlife

Editor’s note: This is a second fictional piece based on facts delivered through ITC contacts by our spirit friends, this time from the astral worlds… how they view our world to get a bearing of our position in time and physical space… which they say are illusions of the material world.

So here I am, an astral being, who has completed another lifetime on Earth, “died” recently, and now find myself getting settled into a paradise community here on the “third human level,” sometimes called the mid-astral plane. I’ve joined the Timestream spirit group, which is dedicated to opening ITC communication bridges with you who still inhabit our former home world. Not an easy task!… as I’ll try to explain in this report.

One of the more difficult adjustments I have to make in my new life is to observe time just passing here in a world that changes little. Nearly all of us remain at the prime of life in the peak of health. The flowers and trees that bring beauty and majesty to our world have flourished here as long as anyone can remember. They don’t wither and die… and they seem to have a living rapport with the sandy soil that prevents the encroachment of weeds. There’s no competition here among the people or the animals or the plants; harmony is a way of life.

When I observe my loved ones on Earth (we have equipment here to help us “down-modulate” into denser bodies in order to get closer to your world and to see things there more clearly), time seems like a bodily substance. (Very strange!) Your bodies seem to morph in the process of aging… bound as you are to the illusion of time.

We sometimes decide to take a step closer and actually visit you on Earth. We might “drop by” the house where we’d spent so many happy years in lifetime. This is especially true of people like me who recently died and are drawn to our grieving family members. We also feel a “pull” to that comfortable home with all of its familiar furnishings.

My new friends here, who are involved in various ITC projects, take similar trips to the homes and labs of the researchers on Earth with whom they’ve fostered a close working friendship. They set up their light, spiritual equipment right alongside your dense radios, computers, and other equipment… all invisible to you, of course.

These trips into your world are almost always facilitated by ethereal beings (and occasionally with the modulating equipment I mentioned earlier), as it’s easy for us in the astral worlds to “get lost” when we start traveling among vibratory levels. It involves concentration and knowledge beyond our mental faculties… so our safe travels depend on the permission and assistance of those we sometimes call the “Rainbow people.” They can either observe and facilitate our journeys through the modulating equipment (in which case they forge a tunnel that pulses in rainbow colors and through which we travel to a particular time and location in your word), or they can actually accompany us on our journeys. In the latter case, blessed be the researchers, whose homes and labs are instantly filled with love and light the moment we arrive!

I’ve heard a lot of strange stories from my colleagues here about these journeys… and the challenges they’ve faced in pinpointing the desired time and location. In one case, the team wanted to console a grieving researcher on Earth sitting beside her father, who was dying in a hospital bed. The team emerged from a tunnel in a parallel world of Earth, in which the researcher had a different shade of hair and body type. It was the same woman, the same father, and the same hospital… but the wrong world! They had to re-enter the tunnel and try again… and again… until they found the right time and location.

The ethereals take these complications for granted; such is the nature of reality. To us, the situation is a bit strange and sometimes frustrating. To you, of course, it’s incomprehensible in a sci-fi kind of way. :-)

That’s the reason why the ethereals initially called our joint ITC work “Project Kindergarten.” There’s so much for you (also for us!) to learn before effective bridges can be established. It was truly an honor when we—your INIT research group and our Timestream spirit group—were all upgraded in 1997 to “Project Sothis,” a name that reflected the wisdom at the height of the First Epoch, in the closing years of Atlantis. (Sothis had been a temple near modern-day Baghdad, centuries before the rise of Babylon, where a panel of priests were in close contact with The Seven ethereals… involved in a project to open a space-time bridge.)

Before I get lost in a literary cul-de-sac, I’ll return to the river analogy used by our ethereal friends in the previous article… in an effort to give you a simpler idea how we contend with the big challenge of navigating time. (Why do you think our spirit group calls ourselves Timestream?)

While the ethereals can see a broad overview of the river of time and its vast expanse, we in the astral worlds can see only a small portion of the river… that is, the section of the river where you happen to be. We can see a little downstream (into the past) and maybe a bit upstream (into the future)… but the larger river with its many tributaries is beyond our view.

riverB1-stretch

We’re more up-close and intimate with your flow of time than the ethereals are, though we’re not a part of it. We can see the rough rapids… times of fear, animosity and conflict in your lives. We can see the smooth, gentle currents in times of peace and contentment in your world.

When we immerse ourselves into the flow of time to get close to your world, our spirit bodies take on a density and we begin to feel some of the roller-coaster emotions that we’d experienced during our lifetimes… the feelings that you take for granted as a part of “being human.” To us it’s an unsettling sensation, and we always look forward to our return home to a finer world of spirit… a world of harmony.

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What I Learned from ITC, the series:

1 Being sensitive in a harsh world
2 Controlling emotions
3 Leaving the family of man
4 How spirits navigate time and space
5 Hardships heighten the human experience
6 To establish a bridge
7 Grasping the illusion of time (ethereal view)
8 Grasping the illusion of time (astral view)

9 Grasping the illusion of time (dismal view)

Posted in After we die, what then?, ITC, Other-worldly matters, Our ancient heritage, Science and Technology, Spiritual realms | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

The Illusion of Time from Ethereal Eyes… What I Learned from ITC (7)

2013 June 2 by macyafterlife

Editor’s note: This is a fictional piece based on facts shared by our ethereal friends, “The Seven,” through various ITC contacts… how they view our world to get a bearing of our position in time and physical space. I’m sure my interpretation here is over-simplified, but hopefully it’s close enough to afford us a better view of how they see our material realm from their timeless perspective, and the challenges they face in locating us. This is the first In a short series of articles about the illusory nature of time.

So here I am, an ethereal being observing millions of years of Earth history… farther removed from you humans than you are from insects with lifespans measured in days.

From here, time in your world looks something like a river.

river9b-stretch

We have a pretty clear view of your past flowing into your present, though the future is a bit clouded…

river6aStretch

… meandering with some uncertainty through the woods toward various fields of possibility.

Stepping back for a broader perspective, we can see your world at critical moments in history, branching off into tributaries that you would call parallel worlds.

river01stretch

Parallel worlds may seem like science fiction to many of you, as you observe life from just one of those worlds… but we can see them all clearly, like rivers flowing in the same general direction.

For instance, there is another Earth flourishing in a parallel universe in which Adolf Hitler never came to power in Germany, and world society is currently evolving on that planet differently than on yours.

Someday you might be able to communicate and collaborate with your human counterparts in the various parallel physical worlds of your Earth. You have already begun such interactions with nonphysical beings such as us and with our mutual friends in the astral worlds. You have done this through ITC.

As your science evolves to embrace the living beings flourishing at many dimensional levels that are currently invisible to your scientists, then time and space will lose much of its illusory nature. Many of the individual tributaries of human evolution will come together into the greater ocean of life that awaits you all.

Many of us anticipate that inevitable reunion with the Earth and its parallel worlds, especially those “departed” humans now residing in the astral afterlife worlds who choose to foster heart connections with their loved ones still alive on Earth.

Next installment: The flow of time as seen from the astral worlds….

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What I Learned from ITC, the series:

1 Being sensitive in a harsh world
2 Controlling emotions
3 Leaving the family of man
4 How spirits navigate time and space
5 Hardships heighten the human experience
6 To establish a bridge
7 Grasping the illusion of time (ethereal view)
8 Grasping the illusion of time (astral view)

9 Grasping the illusion of time (dismal view)

Posted in Heaven and Earth, Science and Technology, Spiritual realms | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Life After Death Project… a Film By Paul Davids

2013 May 25 by macyafterlife

Good afterlife documentaries are rare here in the States. When two are released in the same year, that’s big news!

This could be the year.

A couple of weeks ago I shared a rough cut of Dan Drasin’s landmark film, Calling Earth, which examines technical spirit communication with a focused, analytical eye… and which is close to completion.

Another film is scheduled for release soon… The Life After Death Project, by Paul Davids… and a short introductory trailer was posted this week.

I’ll include below some links to the two films and their producers, and to the new trailer. But first, let’s talk about this latest film by Paul Davids.

First I should warn you that the biggest surprise you’re likely to see in Paul’s trailer is the segment with me in it, which gets a little spooky… and I’ll explain in a moment what I think is happening with the gas-like emissions, shape-shifting and other distortions. Meanwhile….

Paul’s film seems to be geared (moreso than Dan’s film) to the general public and mainstream market, for various reasons:

  • It revolves loosely around a central plot, which is the life and possible afterlife activities of one Forrest J Ackerman, an avid writer, editor, agent, and researcher of sci-fi literature and monster movies. Ackerman was an atheist during lifetime, but apparently changed his tune in the afterlife. Paul Davids presents evidence that Ackerman has been busy since his death in 2008, creating strange anomalies in our world. Many of the interviews in the film are used to support that idea, while lending some insight in the nature of the spirit worlds and how they interplay with our world. (The weird goings-on during my interview might be a case in point.)
  • The film is drawn more toward spooky anomalies (troubled spirits, bumps in the night….) than to serious spiritual influences on our world (inspiration, meaningful communications, loving transworld connections, our ancient spiritual heritage and paradise destiny….), and this bias toward the dark side is typical of mainstream films. It stirs hormones and attracts an audience.
  • The film includes a wide spectrum of interviewees—nurses, doctors, filmmakers, scientists, afterlife researchers, psychic mediums, NDE survivors, and others with strange stories to share.
  • A token skeptic is included in the film in the name of “fair and balanced reporting,” a principle that originated in early journalism to promote objective reporting… but has evolved into something of a festering tumor in the body of modern journalism. The traditional mainstream media today (CBS, NBC, ABC, daily newspapers…)  often insist on dissenting views in the reports they publish. A recent example of how objective journalism has evolved into a media sickness is global warming. Though it is accepted as reality by more than 90 percent of climate scientists, mainstream reports about global warming usually give equal voice to a few loud, vocal detractors, who are often funded by energy companies and far-right political groups that choose to be in denial of the historic dangers posed by global warming, usually for financial, religious, and political purposes. In the case of afterlife reporting, decades of serious research can be undermined, negated and neutralized in a few seconds of film footage by the shallow comments of one or two skeptics.

All that said, Paul Davids’s film is inventive, fascinating, and enjoyable, and I think it’s something the public could enjoy… and learn from.

So… here’s the 8-minute trailer to Paul’s film:

And here’s what might be happening during my segment, which begins about 6 minutes into the trailer. First, there’s an emanation of spiritual substance (ectoplasm) from my hands. Then, the spirit group present at the event tries hard to open the veil between our world and theirs in a way that will manifest on digital recording media… not an easy feat! The result is a melting-away of physical structure, especially my body. The strangest part is the last few frames, in which my face morphs into something kind of freaky… which (yeah, I suppose it’s possible) the spirit team could indeed have planned in honor of Mr Ackerman. Why me? If the above scenario is correct, then maybe the spirit group involved that day figures that I understand the spirit worlds (and the playful nature of some of our spirit friends) well enough to see the humor in this kind of thing without being ‘spooked.’   :-)

This, of course, is speculation that makes sense to me based on 20+ years of afterlife research, especially ITC.

Other people will certainly have other speculations about those anomalies (most notably, pixel distortion due to flawed recording media)… but I’d be leery of any views that are expressed with “certainty”… as certainty in cases like this often reflect an overcompensation for insecurity.

More about Paul Davids…       and his film….

A Huffington Post article about Paul’s film…

More about Dan Drasin…      and his film….

An FMBR event featuring Dan Drasin next month…

Posted in About Mark Macy, After we die, what then?, Heaven and Earth, Inner exploration, ITC, Other-worldly matters, Spiritual realms | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Rewriting the DSM, the Bible of Psychiatry

2013 May 12 by macyafterlife

The fifth edition of the psychiatrists’ bible—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)— is coming out this month. The changes involve minor tweaking of terms and definitions that have always been rather elusive and malleable… pertaining to the diagnosis of mental disorders—depression, autism, bipolar, and so on.

-books

Read more about the DSM updates….

One complaint about the DSM has always been that disorders have been defined more by consensus among psychiatrists than by objective measurement of symptoms under laboratory conditions.

So… many people—patients as well as health professionals—yearn for a new and transformative DSM that would get more to the neurological, chemical and biological bedrock of symptoms and causes of mental disorders.

With that in mind, this is an excellent opportunity to begin to introduce spiritual influences into psychology and psychiatry—specifically, the presence of many invisible spirits flourishing among us physical humans and their effects on our thoughts and feelings.

Read more about those spiritual influences….

It’s just a matter of time before spiritual realities are tossed into the omelet we call modern science, and this could be an opportunity to start cracking the egg.

 

Other articles about science and the human spirit:

The material mind skews logic to explain consciousness  —  Science and NDEs  —  More modern-day epicycles  —  Foreign-accent syndrome  —  Measuring maya  —  Asteroids pummeled Earth for 2 billion years  —  Exoplanets and the prospect we’re not alone!  —  Mysteries of Eden  —  Combat killing and the human spirit  —  Noxious capitalism and the human spirit  —  Aurora theater tragedy  —  News in perspective  —  Pfrankenstein’s monster: big pharma  —  Preventing that pesky apocalyse  —  A life and afterlife debate  —  Updating the Therapists’ DSM Bible

Posted in Science and Technology, Society and ethics, Spiritual realms | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Calling Earth… a Landmark Afterlife Documentary

2013 May 11 by macyafterlife

Congratulations to California filmmaker Dan Drasin, who’s produced (imho) the best technical documentary to date on spirit communication and the afterlife.

The title: Calling Earth.

Dan explores the phenomenal history of technical spirit communication (from the work of Friedrich Juergenson and Konstantin Raudive) to the awe-insipring results of contemporary researchers including Marcello Bacci (Italy), Ernst Senkowski (Germany),  and Maggy Fischbach in Luxembourg.

Maggy isn’t shown in the film, even though I’m convinced that her results are unequivocally the best in the world. Having worked closely with her for a number of years, I’m sure that the miraculous contact field that opened up for Maggy (and which was used by our spirit friends to place phone calls to me and to various other researchers on both sides of the Atlantic) was made possible largely by the fact that she’s a very private, highly sensitive woman. She’s learned over the years that opening oneself up to the noble-savage soup of human emotions, especially the contempt of crusading skeptics, fouls-up the contact field and weakens the resulting communications from beyond. So… in case you’re wondering why “the Luxembourg group” doesn’t show up, even in good films like this one… that’s why.

The film also looks closely, here in the States, at the Butlers, Sarah Estep, and the EVP moms collaborating as “The Big Circle,” a name coined by their departed children.

This is a great film!… and it lasts about an hour.

Watch Dan’s film, Calling Earth, on Youtube…

…or view it below…. (Again, click on the   [   ]  symbol at lower right to go to full-screen mode).

 

This, by the way, is a not-quite-finished “rough cut” of Dan’s film. I’ll try to follow Dan’s progress, and then report when the completed film is ready for release. I hope to buy one of the first DVDs!

Happy viewing!… and, again, thanks Dan!

Explore more of Dan’s world of creative works….

Posted in After we die, what then?, ITC, Other-worldly matters, Science and Technology | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments »

Are You an Extrovert or an Introvert?… Me? Well….

2013 May 4 by macyafterlife

Do you feel more comfortable on the left side or the right side of this table (adapted from thesaurus.com)?

Extroverted

Introverted
outgoing, congenial, cordial, demonstrative, friendly, gregarious, personable, sociable, social, unreserved reserved, bashful, cautious, collected, cool, demure, introspective, modest, quiet, restrained, shy, soft-spoken, solitary

Or, better yet, you can take a simple test to determine how outgoing or introspective you are. Just answer 20 true-false questions, tally the results, and voila!… you know where you fit in this world of extroverts and introverts.

The test, and a book on which it’s based, were written by a remarkable young woman named Susan Cain. Susan’s an introvert… (though her poise during a recent TED presentation wouldn’t suggest it!)

Take the Susan Cain test

Me? I’m heavily introverted (18 points out of 20 on her test). Always have been. As a kid, the thought of making eye contact with someone—anyone—terrified me. I always looked at the ground while standing or walking… which limited my aspirations as a basketball player.

The gag is that you can determine that an introvert likes someone if he looks at the other person’s shoes instead of his own.    :-)    That may be a bit of stretch, but it’s not far off.

“Painfully shy” is how one teacher described me.

“Inferiority complex” was a common term in the 1950s psychology… and I fit the diagnosis well.

I’ve been reading the Susan Cain book, Quiet (thanks to wife Regina, who selected it for her book club), and it puts a lot into perspective as I reflect on my life… and on the world.

In particular, my introversion explains a lot about my work in ITC and afterlife research… my theories about spiritual reality… my view of human beings as noble-savage creatures in a noble-savage world… my belief in a politics of good will… my struggle with public presentations and group efforts (including the miraculous INIT association that I helped establish late last century)….

Init95

Founding members of INIT, the International Network for Instrumental Transcommunication, 1995 (l-r): Mark Macy (usa), Tony Broad (gbr), Hans Luethi (che), Jules Harsch (lux), Irma Weisen (fin), Juliet Hollister (usa), Sonia Rinaldi (bra), Theo Locher (che), Maggy Harsch-Fischbach (lux), Guenther Emde (deu), Nils Jacobson (swe), Fritz Malkhoff (deu), Claudius Kern (aut), Ralf Determeyer (deu), Jonathan Marten (gbr).

In short, understanding introversion helps me understand why I look at the world the way I do… and why the bulk of my research today revolves around my writing, and no longer around public presentations and interviews and hands-on international collaboration.

Before I babble on about myself, though, here’s a bit more about introversion and extroversion as described in Susan Cain’s book. In a nutshell:

Around the year 1900, as the clamor of the Industrial Revolution was energizing the western world, a new kind of leader rose to the helm… the extreme extrovert. Electricity, indoor plumbing, assembly lines, and electronic communications were transforming society, which (especially here in the States) evolved from a “culture of character,” led by quiet, reflective people (think Abe Lincoln), to a “culture of personality,” led by out-going, confident salesmen and self-promoters (think Tony Robbins). Through most of the 20th Century, introverts have felt pressure from parents, teachers, psychologists, and bosses to break out of their shells or lose out on life’s rewards. Even admissions people at stoic Ivy League colleges began to desire team players and hobnobbers over bookworms and intellectuals. Business schools today revolve around a culture of intense fraternization that sucks the life out of an introvert. Publishers no longer want bright, introspective authors unless they can puff up and promote their books.

In short, the past century in the USA, and throughout much of the western world, has been a golden age of the extrovert… the self-promoter… the networker. Quiet people typically have had a harder time making a ripple in society. Studies cited in Susan’s book have found that members of groups listen to loud, self-assured members with limited knowledge before they listen to soft-spoken members who are certified experts.

A Noble-Savage Parallel?

My first inclination while reading Quiet was to assume that if we could unravel the noble from the savage in human culture, the introverts would be among the noble and the extroverts would be among the savage.

Faulty thinking on my part, I soon realized.

Qualities of noble behavior include friendliness, congeniality, and cooperation, so in terms of sociability, the extroverts lean more toward the noble side than do their brooding, introspective peers.

On the other hand, conflict is a savage human behavior, and while introverts typically shun conflict, many extroverts thrive in it… so in terms of conflict, extroverts lean more toward the savage side.

It seems that the qualities of noble human behavior, such as love, trust, good will, and the desire to serve others selflessly, are spread out among introverts and extroverts. And so are the qualities of savage human behavior—fear, mistrust, vengeance, craving, greed….

So there seems to be no direct correlation between the introvert-extrovert scale in human affairs and the noble-savage scale that’s evolved from my afterlife research.

The Boon of the Blog

The modern blog is one of the sweetest fruits society has ever produced for the introverts among us. We can work quietly from the privacy of our homes, collecting our ideas, focusing our thoughts, and putting them “out there” with a press of the “Publish” button. We can go the extra distance to promote and publicize our blog with search engine optimization and email blasts if we want to, but it’s not in our nature to do that… nor is it necessary.

Fact is, we don’t really care how widely our message gets spread among the public. We simply have this information that we know has to be made available. Even if we know deep-down that it’s vital information that will someday transform the world (as in the case of ITC research or the “Vitality Ratio”), we don’t really care if it becomes mainstream next week, next year, or long after we’re dead. Our only compulsion is to make it available so that it can germinate when the time is right.

The rewards for our efforts—name recognition, monetary gain…—aren’t as important to most introverts as they are to many extroverts. Granted, to see our own efforts exploited for personal gain by others is unsettling, but it’s an ego thing… an unavoidable part of the savage side of our carnal composition. And, fortunately, society has certain built-in legal mechanisms to protect people from exploitation.

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Note: I hope to write a few more articles like this one—digging into human nature from a personal angle while drawing on the work of serious researchers.    — MM

Posted in About Mark Macy, Society and ethics | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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