The Purpose: Your Soul's Emotional Journey: Learning How to Experience Life Through a Different Lens

By Rick Lindal

Are you feeling lost in life? Do your emotions sometimes overwhelm you? Do you wonder why bad things happen? Written for readers from diverse backgrounds, this book explores the purpose of our emotional journey through life from a psycho-soul perspective and helps us answer the question "Why am I here?" It is a handbook for surviving t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Lindal
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993790416

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Rick Lindal has a bachelor’s of science in psychology from the University of Toronto and a master’s in psychology from the University of Guelph, both in Ontario, Canada. He obtained a doctorate in psychology at York University, England, while researching emotional responsiveness in adolescents. He subsequently worked at a youth custody prison facility for young adults. He returned to Canada in 1986, where he directed an outreach program for mentally disturbed young adults at the Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital, Ontario, before commencing work at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, as a therapist for victims of the AIDS epidemic. He opened a private practice in the early nineties, where he specialized in existential psychotherapy as well as past-life and inter-life regression therapy techniques. He is currently in private practice in the towns of Bowmanville, Cobourg, and Grafton, Ontario, Canada. (www.dr-ricklindal.com)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Within the pages of this book, you will find a revised and an expanded edition of my initial book, Slice Of Life: A Self-Help Odyssey. A practical perspective for thriving within the trappings of the physical world , published in 2012. This edition, re-launched under a new name, contains all of the materials published within the pages of the initial publication in addition to some notable changes, including, several additional sections and chapters which attempt to round out the spiritual/existential concept of life introduced in the initial book. Also, new, a Foreword by Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Iceland, Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson

This edition was motivated by my psychotherapy clients, all of whom found the first edition helpful in their emotional recovery, and by mental health professionals who referred clients to my practice after reading the book.

A special thank you to Peter Billiaert for his encouragement and valuable suggestions after reading drafts of this new edition. A thank you to my dogs, Loki and Thor, for their everlasting affection, and last but not least, to my husband John Van Bakel for his enduring support and patience during the many hours I spent sitting at the computer typing away.

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The foundational concepts in this book are mainly based on the works of Jane Roberts, The Seth Material, and on the writings of the existential philosopher, Dr. Victor Frankl, as well as on concepts garnered from Neale Donald Walsch’s trilogy, Conversations with God - An Uncommon Dialogue, and Michael Newton’s books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls. This book is, in part, a synthesis of their work and the accumulative experience of this author’s own 30-years of practice as a therapist. Because of this, and for fear of referencing these authors out of context, I have only made sporadic references to their work within the pages of this book. That being said, the concepts espoused by them are identifiable throughout the book, and I acknowledge with gratitude their influence on my conceptual framework and on my therapeutic practice for the past thirty years. Their individual works are listed and recommended as suggested reading at the end of the book.

FOREWORD

Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D.

Rick Lindal, Ph.D., was born in the city of Reykjavik, Iceland. He spent his boyhood years at his uncle’s farm at Lakjamot in the north of Iceland and his teen years at Laugardalsholar, a farm in the south. As with all youth born in this remote country, Dr. Lindal learned about the country’s folklore and fairy tales, and the commonplace interest in ghosts and communication with the departed. During his teenage years, Rick developed a keen interest in parapsychology, which led to the reading of untold books on the subject and to the study of psychology at the universities of Toronto, Guelph, and Calgary in Canada, and later at the University of York in England where he completed his doctorate dissertation.

During his studies and over the course of thirty years, Dr. Lindal received training in numerous therapeutic techniques, including individual, family, and group psychotherapy. He has worked as a psychologist in prison, hospital, and community settings, and he is currently in private practice near the city of Toronto, Canada.

In recent years his psychotherapeutic technique has been focused on assisting his patients in the development and understanding of issues that pertain to their existence and purpose in life. This mode of therapy is focused on the exploration of existential and spiritual issues. During the course of treatment, regression techniques are often employed which attempt to allow patients to recall past lives, including the death experiences following those lives, as well as recollections of their activities following those incarnations once they have entered the Spiritual Dimension. Dr. Lindal tells me that explorations within the Spiritual Dimension prior to incarnations on Earth have proved helpful for some patients, as it is through them that they may often recall the reasons why they decided to venture into their current incarnation. These existential/spiritual explorations have the effect of widening the clients’ sense of existence and helps them bestow a sense of purpose and meaning within their current lives.

In this book, The Purpose: Your Soul’s Emotional Journey. Learning how to experience life through a different lens, Dr. Lindal attempts to present these complicated concepts in layman’s terms, so readers unfamiliar with these concepts can readily understand them. Within the pages of this book, a worldview is presented, based mainly on the writings of Jane Roberts’ Seth Material, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations With God, Dr. Michael Newton’s Journey of the Souls and Destiny of the Souls, and Victor Frankl’s extensive writings on existential thought and psychotherapy.

The basic concepts presented in the book can be summarized as follows: (1) Every human consciousness exists simultaneously, both within the Spiritual Dimension and on Earth; the consciousness stationed within the Spiritual Dimension is referred to as the ‘over-soul’ and it guides a portion of itself, i.e. the ‘soul’, via intuition, that is projected onto Earth and envelops and maintains the existence of the human body during its lifetime. (2) Our consciousness never ceases to exist, and (3) we become fully aware of our greater being immediately following the death of our physical bodies. (4) A lifetime is simply a finite journey from our normal home within the Spiritual Dimension onto the planet Earth—stationed within a Physical Dimension of space/time. (5) All events of major significance during our lifetimes are pre-destined and orchestrated by ourselves (i.e. our over-soul) prior to our physical existence. (6) The main purpose for our incarnations on Earth is to experience negative emotions ‘first-hand’, as the depths of these emotions cannot be experienced by our over-souls when they are focused exclusively within the Spiritual Dimension, and (7) it is through these experiences that our over-souls evolve spiritually. (8) Every individual is responsible for his actions, as he is the sole architect of all the experiences during his lifetime. (9) A divine challenge, or paradox, is self-imposed upon all incarnating souls; however, while the challenge during a lifetime is to experience the full thrust of negative emotions, a human being must not kill himself or others as a consequence of the intense sensations this experience may cause him to feel.

There are numerous other existential and spiritual concepts espoused in this book that build on these basic ideas. Also, in the appendix and in the postings on the book’s website, many of these issues are explored in more detail for the interested reader.

In conversation with Dr. Lindal, he explains how once this overarching worldview is in place for his patients (i.e. for those who are able to accept these existential/spiritual concepts, or at least some of them), a context is provided, where the mundane psychological techniques, commonly used by psychologists when treating patients, have a better opportunity to take hold and change behavior. In his experience, a psychotherapy void of the exploration of purpose, meaning, and spirituality seldom achieves positive long-term outcomes.

The overarching thesis in this text is that full emergence into negative emotions is the main objective of physical existence, while at the same time our challenge is not to cause harm to ourselves or to others when these emotions are overwhelming. From this perspective, a lifetime, as depicted in this book, is not an easy journey. Dr. Lindal explains that many readers find it is difficult to accept the idea that they themselves create their own experience, both the ups and the downs, in order to learn about the most painful emotions imaginable. And not only that, they are also in agreement, albeit on a spiritual level, with everything bad that does happen to them.

Dr. Lindal reports that these existential/spiritual concepts have proven to be therapeutic for those who have studied them prior to experiencing a particular tragic event. However, for those who are not familiar with these views at the time a tragedy befalls them, thrusting these ideas onto them at those times is tactless, insensitive, and not at all helpful, as they are not in a state of mind to be able, or willing, to contemplate the idea that they created the event that is now overwhelming them, for their own spiritual learning. However, once the negative emotions have been experienced fully (which is in fact the intention from a spiritual perspective) and the mood has begun to lift—be it a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade—it is human nature, in hindsight, to seek to understand the reasons why such a tragic event befell them and to bestow meaning onto the past—tragic as it may have been. The worldview contained within the pages of this book can be presented to the patient at that juncture and to those who are able to accept the concepts of destiny, purpose, and meaning in human existence.

But what evidence is there for the existence of human consciousness following physical death? Contact with those who have passed away is not as uncommon as many may assume. In my research, The European Human Value Survey, which was administered to subjects in most countries of Western Europe around 1980, found that about every fourth person in Europe had at least felt once that they were in contact with someone who has died. There were large national differences, the greatest frequency being reported by Icelanders and Italians (41% and 34%, respectively) and the lowest by Norwegians and Danes (9% and 10%, respectively). In the United Kingdom, the percentage was 26%. The same question was asked in the USA, in three different surveys, in different years, using large representative sample sizes. The results from these surveys showed that 29%, 31%, and 41% were in agreement with the question. In all the countries surveyed, contact with someone who had died was reported more frequently among women than men.

These surveys, however, did not tell us anything about the nature of the experience the person had with those who had passed away. For example, was the contact visual, auditory, olfactory, tactual, or simply a strong feeling of a presence? Under what circumstances did it occur—when and where? Who were the deceased—relatives, friends, or strangers? How did those persons die, and how long ago? In a follow-up study, with the help of my students, 450 respondents from the Icelandic survey who had reported in the affirmative on the initial survey were interviewed in depth. The results of that study are reported in my book The Departed Among the Living (2012). Within the pages of the book, details of the respondents’ experiences are discussed in over 400 brief case descriptions. Two observations among the numerous discoveries found in this study revealed that 50% of widows and widowers reported that they had had post-mortem contact with their deceased spouses. Also, of significant interest, was the discovery that in numerous instances contact with the departed occurred unexpectedly, without the experiencer having knowledge that the person had just passed away.

Visions of the departed, and of spiritual beings, are common just prior to death and have been referred to as ‘deathbed visions’. Karlis Osis and I conducted the most extensive study that has been done on this subject to date, the results of which I subsequently published in the book At the Hour of Death, which has been translated into several languages and published in numerous editions, most recently in 2013 in a 30th edition.

Past-life memories have also been one of my areas of research, which began at the encouragement of my friend and benefactor Prof. Ian Stevenson. Over the years I have investigated nearly one hundred cases of children claiming past-life memories, in four different countries. Some of these memories proved verifiable and convinced me to consider the idea of previous lives seriously, and I have written several articles and book chapters on this subject.

Research investigating visitations by the dead, deathbed visions, and past-life memories suggests that a person’s consciousness, a soul, or some ethereal conscious presence of the human being, survives physical death. This topic has fascinated people throughout all of history and it continues to do so today. In this interesting book, Dr. Lindal takes this topic further and outside the realm of scientific enquiry when he proposes that the human journey during a lifetime is in fact a soul’s journey from a Spiritual Dimension into our physical realm. From this spiritual perspective, visitations by the dead, deathbed visions, and memories of past lives, are then within the normal course of events and not at all unusual. However, scientific proof for the existence of a Spiritual Dimension is likely to remain outside the scope of scientific enquiry for a very long time.

The perspective taken in this book takes a stab at bridging the divide between spirit and science, and provides the reader with a philosophy of existence, along with some practical psychotherapeutic suggestions, that may help him wrestle a purpose and meaning out of the inevitable ups and downs of life. Reading this book will broaden the horizons of the spiritually converted and of the scientific sceptic alike, as well as those individuals who fall on the continuum in between these two extremes.

Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology,

University of Iceland.

Dr. Haraldsson is the author of numerous books, including:

The Departed Among the Living, At the Hour of Death (with Karlis Osis), and Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba, The Story of A Modern Day Prophet.

For other publications, please go to www.hi.is/~erlendur

PART I

Prologue

THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

Within the swirling presence of hundreds of pulsating orbs emanating all the colours of the rainbow, Oreon enters a lecture hall where soon-to-be-incarnating souls have gathered for a lecture that will prepare them for their upcoming lifetimes on Earth.

The Spiritual Dimension is HOME,

where the main ingredient is LOVE.

This is home, it is the Spiritual Dimension: A dimension where love is palpable in such abundance that it appears as if it were its main ingredient. There is space, but no time, yet there is an orderly sequence of events. Here, resides a civilization of souls that are driven by an unbound curiosity to learn and to evolve. It’s a mental world with an environment that contains no physical matter. Everything within it, the glue that holds it together, is maintained through a consciousness imbued with such love that no words can begin to describe it; it is as if this love were a substance in and of itself.¹ Within this Dimension all communication is telepathic where ‘thought bundles’ are tossed back and forth between souls that zip them open and decipher their content within an instant.²

Oreon, a highly evolved soul and a teacher, has travelled to this lecture hall from a higher tier within the Spiritual Dimension. As he commences his lecture, he projects this ‘thought bundle’ onto thousands of souls in the audience: In this, my final lecture, I’ll be sharing with you some observations you’ll encounter when you experience the planet Earth through the physical bodies you have now chosen for your upcoming incarnations.

The soul exists simultaneously in the Spiritual Dimension

and in the Physical Dimension.

All the souls in the lecture hall were in their final stages of preparation for their upcoming journeys, or more accurately, their live projections to Earth. The case being that the consciousness that makes up the soul would never actually leave the Spiritual Dimension, but merely project an aspect of itself onto Earth. In effect, a division is devised before an incarnation, where the main portion of the soul stays in the Spiritual Dimension (termed the ‘over-soul’), while a projection, which will meld with the human body and experience Earth’s environment during its lifecycle, is the ‘soul’. The soul has ‘free will’ while it roams about Earth during its incarnation, but the link that it has with its ‘over-soul’ is never severed. The ‘over-soul’ provides the soul with guidance throughout the entire incarnation. In effect, the soul exists simultaneously on Earth and in the Spiritual Dimension.

At this stage in the preparation, the ‘over-souls’ had already prepared their projections and they were gathered in the lecture hall for some final comments from Oreon. The destinations for each of these souls had already been made. They all knew the locations on Earth where they’d be born and they had made the final arrangements with their parents who would give them birth. Other details had also been decided upon, including, for example, their gender and sexual orientation. The souls also knew the main events that would occur during their upcoming incarnations, and they knew how circumstances would unfold during their lives that would maximize the opportunity for them to learn about their inner natures and, in particular, about ‘negative emotions’.

As the souls settled down for this final lecture, Oreon tossed out another ‘thought bundle’, and said: "As you know, Earth is only one of many physical planets nested within a Space/Time Dimension which we journey to for our enlightenment. Take a moment and visualize the Space/Time Dimension as a ‘capsule’. This capsule, in turn, houses the Physical Dimension of matter. Within the Space/Time Dimension both physical and mental events are strung out sequentially over time and in space. This allows for a linear history of events to be created. Within these dimensions, gradual changes have taken place over millennia where the elements that comprise matter have recombined in numerous different forms. Life-forms have evolved, and evolution has taken place. During the planet’s recent history the human body evolved and with it came a unique opportunity for us to have direct experience of the planet’s interior dimensions and to learn about our inner nature. We achieve this by way of melding our souls with the human body throughout its lifecycle.

This particular planet, located within the Milky Way galaxy, spins on its own axis, and moves approximately 100,000 kilometres an hour around a nearby sun. The energy from the sun provides the planet with sufficient energy to sustain numerous forms of life, including, of course, the human body which you are now preparing yourselves to meld with.

The soul destined to be Rikki was in attendance, and so were his soulmates. His soulmates were age-old friends whom he’d incarnated with on many previous occasions. For this incarnation on Earth, they had agreed to serve as the main characters in Rikki’s theatrical drama, while, of course, pursuing their own dramas at the same time. They would be his lovers, his siblings, and his close friends.

As Rikki sat in the lecture hall, he thought to himself: Here I go again. I’ve designed this lifetime to be very different compared to my last one. I wonder how I’ll do this time?

Oreon launched another ‘thought bundle’: While we can study the effects of ‘negative emotions’ here at home, our Spiritual Dimension does not allow for us to have direct ‘first-hand’ experience with them. As you all know, there is too much love around here for that. So, in order for you to have those experiences, you must enter an environment where your awareness of this ambient love we feel here is reduced considerably. Earth is a perfect place for that. Down there, events are strung out in time, you have no certainty as to what will happen next, you’ll have to deal with space, distance, and the density of matter in all its numerous forms. The combination of these factors is critical in order for you to experience the intensity and the depth to which negative emotions are capable of taking you.

Rikki thought to himself: The types of negative emotions seem to be endless. I’ve certainly experienced a lot of them in my past lives on Earth.

Oreon’s telepathic acumen picked up on his musings instantly, and he responded: That’s correct, Rikki. In fact, all of you gathered here today have had untold experiences with negative emotions in your past lives, but there is more to learn . . . much more before you graduate.

Oreon went on to explain how he had lived untold lifetimes on Earth, and how he had eventually graduated after attaining the ability to transcend all negative emotions. We, the souls gathered in the lecture hall, all knew that he’d not incarnated on Earth for eons and that he now devoted himself to the job of preparing souls for their journeys. And he also mentored their ‘over-souls’ while their soul-projections roamed the Earth during incarnations.

All the souls gathered in the lecture hall appeared in their natural form as pulsating orbs. Oreon, the most evolved, radiated the colour purple, while others emanated all the other colours of the rainbow. Most of the orbs, however, were shades of white and yellow, characteristic of relatively young souls.³

All of the souls present had attended these preparation lectures on numerous occasions and on a variety of topics. Today’s final lecture was a sort of overview, and it looked at the type of experiences available for different creatures during their lifecycles.

Oreon continued: Now as you know, consciousness creates matter within the Physical Dimension. In this process, basic chemical elements are created that comprise the main building blocks of life. The basic chemical elements of these building blocks are sulphur, phosphorous, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen. These substances are continually recycled as they combine in numerous creative ways under the direction of a basic consciousness that is omnipresent on Earth, to create organisms, one after another, which then proceed through their lifecycles. Carbon is the most fundamental of these elements. It forms the basic physical structure of all creatures, including, of course, the human body that you are now making preparations to occupy. Oxygen (which it may interest you to know, is a microbial byproduct that accumulated over millennia when bacteria, while harvesting energy from the sun, produced it as a waste product) is a pivotal chemical element that has the function of cycling energy within the organism. This energy sustains life for all creatures that live on the surface of the planet.

‘Thought bundles’ were now flying about between souls in the classroom, as they listened to and processed the information Oreon was sharing with them.

Oreon continued: Think for a moment of Earth’s environment as a combination of layers, ranges, and spectrums. Each species that lives on the planet, however, is only able to experience a limited aspect of the vast opportunities that exist within these layers, ranges, and spectrums. The human body that will be housing you is, for example, only capable of a very limited experience within this dimension. This is mainly due to the limitations of the body’s physical sensory organs. A human body is only capable of seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling within a very limited range compared to many other creatures who live on the planet. Some creatures’ sensory organs allow them the capacity to see at higher and lower wavelengths, to sense sound at higher and lower frequencies, and to smell much more intensely, compared to humans. And there are also numerous creatures whose experiences are limited to entirely different layers, ranges, and spectrums. Take crustaceans, for example, which live around volcanic vents on the ocean floor. While oxygen is the main element that provides energy to sustain life for creatures on the surface of the planet, these crustaceans rely instead on sulphur spewed from volcanic vents to provide them with energy to sustain their lives. Their realm of existence is therefore entirely different.

Oreon continued without pausing: "Speed of movement provides for another continuum of experience that varies depending on the animal or organism. The human body moves relatively slowly. A fly, on the other hand, moves about with speed that far outpaces the human. Conversely, from the fly’s perspective, humans are seen to move at a snail’s pace, while to the sloth, humans look as if they are moving at lightning speed.

There are also numerous differences within the perceptual mechanisms of the same species. Take humans, for example. Many of you will be partially colour blind during your lifetimes, which will give you an entirely different experience of colour. Some of you will be equipped with a greater number of taste receptors, which will give you an enhanced experience of taste. Your sex drives will vary, causing some of you to be seriously distracted by preoccupations below the waist. Physical prowess will also vary greatly between the bodies you will occupy. Some of you will have exceptional abilities in sport, while others will exceed at numerous other forms of human endurance. Some of you will have crossover connections between your senses and perceptions, where, for example, letters or numbers may evoke the experience of colour or sound. While others of you will have cross-over connections that will evoke specific smells or tastes when you hear different sounds.

Rikki was intrigued, as Oreon continued with these examples: "As infants and young children, all of you will experience a period in which you will be able to see and communicate with the departed. They will usually be your grandparents or relatives who may visit you on occasion to comfort or to entertain you. Your reports of these encounters will, however, be ignored by your parents in nearly all instances.

This ability to see the departed will fade for most of you during childhood, but there will be some of you who will retain this ability throughout your adult lives. Some of you will be able to see and talk to your guides, while others will be mediums and will have the ability to channel spirits from this side of the veil. Some of you will be able to step outside of your physical bodies. When this happens, you will experience your consciousness as outside of your body, and you will be able to see hidden objects and see happenings at distant locations, which you will remember when you return and awaken your body. In rare instances you will also be able to teleport, where you will have the ability to transport your bodies and materialize it at different locations.⁴

Rikki thought to himself, What a fascinating life that would be! I wonder if I’ll have any of these extraordinary abilities?

Oreon intersected briefly as he replied to Rikki’s musings and said: "All souls have these mental abilities if they are able to figure out how to break out of the cultural trances they are born into and let go