More On Death, More Stories & More On Religion

This is a more intimate talk where i open up in my personal life. IF your seeking answers to what happens after death or if your one who ask is religion necessary? Come join me and open your minds to new possibities or a different outlook. So grab a drink, sit back, and enjoy.

Transcript

A couple weeks ago I made a recording about,

I entitled it,

Do We Need Religion?

And my intent on saying if we need religion or not was just a statement.

It wasn't anything to be disconcerned about.

What I was trying to get across was that even the atheist,

If they started meditating,

Doesn't have to have a religious background.

Having a religious background is having a positive background,

Like a white background.

Whereas having an atheist point of view or mind frame would be having a background that is black,

Dark,

A negative background.

But if you notice,

The whole universe lights up with a negative background.

It's this mysterious dark matter that creates the world and the universe to look dark.

But it balances itself out.

And just like white chalk on a blackboard,

The contrast can be seen a lot clearer.

So if you meditate,

Or let's say you're atheist and you're just now getting into meditation,

Then don't worry about the outcomes.

Don't think about what's going to happen if I do this.

That's the wrong way to approach it.

The right way to approach it is to do it for its own sake.

To meditate for its own sake.

So in a way you don't need religion,

But if you've already got the positive background,

Then you need to find the darkness to balance out the positive background.

And that's what the Taoists call the yin and yang,

The meeting of the equals and the opposites.

Each thing that has an opposite is also complementary to itself.

So my name is Doug Grumman and thank you again for joining me.

I love sharing whatever insight I can think about.

I don't script anything.

Like I said,

I brew things over in my mind maybe as I'm driving down the road.

And speaking of driving down the road,

I just got back from driving from Oklahoma City to Galveston and Galveston to,

Well,

Vice versa,

From Galveston to Oklahoma City and then back.

And I had a rental vehicle.

And everything was fine,

But every once in a while the rental vehicle sounded like something was going on with the engine.

And I stopped and I checked the oils and I checked all the fluids.

The engine sounded fine and acted fine.

So I was like,

Okay,

Well,

I guess it's just weird noises this vehicle makes.

So anyway,

When I left Oklahoma City,

And I have to say I do kind of like Oklahoma City.

It's kind of a nice town.

Boomer Sooner's and all that great stuff.

I wasn't very impressed with the Brahms hamburger.

That's another story that we'll save for another day.

But yeah,

They had ice cream there and everything and that was cool.

So one night I just had hamburgers and ice cream,

Really watching my diet,

I know.

But yeah,

You know,

Once in a while you got to treat yourself to something nice.

So anyway,

Oklahoma City was nice.

But as I was leaving Oklahoma City and driving back to Texas,

About an hour outside of Oklahoma City,

My check engine light comes on.

And I'm like,

Oh,

God,

Oh,

Great.

I'm not going to make it back.

It's going to be a horrible thing if this freaking van breaks down and I'm nowhere near home.

So anyway,

I dealt with it and figured that it was the best and the safest thing to do is just keep driving south and see what happens.

I was already out in the middle of nowhere.

Turning back was not an option.

So anyway,

I made it home and it was just a nice trip.

I got in and out of there between the bad weather.

So the traveling was nice.

And I met a lot of beautiful people,

A lot of nice,

Neat people that made my trip even better.

The job I was working on went really well.

And I got compliments from my boss as to how good that job turned out.

So those things I like.

I like hearing those things.

It makes me feel good about the work I do and to feel appreciated and to feel wanted and needed is definitely a good thing.

And I hope you guys feel that in your careers and in your lives,

Too,

That you feel wanted and needed.

I mean,

It's a fine line between that and developing or feeding your ego.

If it's feeding your ego,

You just kind of have to be aware that that's what's happening and just brush it off.

You know,

Just set it aside and brush it off.

So anyway,

That was my trip to Oklahoma City.

It was nice and fun.

So if you feel driven to become more spiritual,

To become more divine,

I could say in a word.

We are already divine in a way,

In the same way that a seed is already a tree.

The seed has the whole tree hidden inside of it.

And we are that same way.

Most of us don't realize that we're still in seed form.

We think that we're already a big tree.

But every seed thinks that way.

And the best way to keep people from even exploring that path or trying to dive into it is to tell them,

Yeah,

You're already a tree.

So if you're already a tree,

Then you don't need to practice meditation.

You don't need to worry about growing.

Just be.

And I mean,

There's some truth in that.

If you can just be,

Then it's kind of like letting the grass grow and watching the grass grow.

It's like,

OK,

What's happening?

You have to have patience with it.

You have to grow with it.

And when I like to say grow with it because to me,

Some mystics say that there's nothing you can do to become enlightened.

In a way,

That's true.

But also,

In a way,

There are things you can do.

And what you can do is develop the four bodies to mature the four bodies,

The physical,

The emotional,

The intellectual,

And the spiritual to grow in those four bodies is the one thing you can do.

Because what happens is when you grow enough,

When you develop enough,

Then the ego can't contain you anymore.

It's like the eggshell breaks.

You're kind of like inside of a shell.

Or the seed itself breaks open and starts turning into a plant or to a tree.

So in a way,

Yeah,

There are things you can do to expedite the truth.

But it's kind of like also when you plant a seed to have it grow and turn into a plant,

You can't keep digging it up every day or two and looking at it to see if anything's happening.

You just have to trust.

You have to bury the seed and then water it.

And what do we mean by watering it?

What we mean is that you meditate and have this alone time and this quiet time and this solitude time.

You're giving peace to your soul and allowing the seed to break open.

So in one hand,

You can do what you can to mature.

And in the other hand,

You have your times where you're quiet and you have the solitude in your life and this peacefulness.

And you give the seed a chance to break open and turn into a plant.

So let's verify this.

I have said,

Okay,

Do you need religion?

Well,

You don't need it.

But if you have something,

Don't throw it away either.

My sister around the age of 13,

14 years old,

I'm a couple years older than my sister,

But we moved out to the country when we were just teenagers.

And my little sister started going to a Baptist church.

And one day,

One weekend,

I didn't start going to the church right away.

But she came home with the Spirit of God in her and this something that she had,

I couldn't tell what it was.

I knew it was love,

But it just felt like she had something that I didn't have.

And in a way,

I was like,

Well,

I want that.

I want that kind of love.

I want to feel what my sister's feeling.

So I started going to church.

And then it wasn't long before I accepted Jesus and all that and became saved and became a Christian and started living that way.

But I always felt something was still missing though.

Some part of me,

I don't know if I had what my sister felt or if I was just seeking for something more.

And it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I started meditating and started being centered and being calm and peaceful.

And then I think it's when I found out that basically I had a near-death experience,

Right?

And that woke me up in a lot of ways.

It made me realize I was living life in the future or in the past.

I was either desiring something like going to heaven or I was fearful that I might go to hell or whatever.

So it's a trap.

In a way,

It's a trap because it pulls you in both directions away from the present moment.

So I learned very quickly actually.

I'd only been meditating for about a couple years and I had that realization that I was not living fully in the present moment.

And desire for heaven basically is a subtle form of greed.

And I think that's what I had,

That form of greed is what I had that maybe my sister didn't have because she definitely had something that I didn't have or at least that's the way I felt about it.

But anyway,

I think that you can attain in any religion or even being an atheist you can attain.

You don't have to have the backgrounds or you can switch from one religion to another religion,

But as long as that religion did what it did to me,

Pulled me into the future or the past,

Made me afraid or made me greedy for some future that may come or may never come.

And the thing about religions is everything they promise you happens to you after you die.

And what I have to say is in a way that's only half true because you can die,

Your ego can die,

A part of you can die and then you're born again.

You're born a second time.

But a part of you has to die first.

And that happened to me.

That was different from what my sister had.

I didn't feel like I came home until I let go of whatever I felt like I was holding on to,

This illusion,

Because it's all illusory.

The future is an illusion and the past is gone so you can't change it.

There's nothing you can do about it,

But you can live in the present moment and you can grow from that and get into that.

So yeah,

I just wanted to clarify a few of those issues with you.

If you've been following me on any of the work I've been putting into Insight Timer,

I also share on Facebook a lot of the videos and audio tracks I make here.

But I just made a video on death and what I know about it and everything like that.

And I shared that there are things that happen to me in the evenings that happen.

I get visited in the evenings.

But I didn't share any of those instances with my audience.

And I felt like maybe I should.

So this one kind of threw me a little bit.

I've been thrown a lot.

But anyway,

So check this out.

So alright,

Everybody knows that I skydive.

I surf.

I do all kinds of crazy stuff,

Right?

Adrenaline junkie,

I guess.

It's just a part of me and I really do it more for the art form.

So this happened back in Virginia Beach when I was living in Virginia Beach.

I was settling down one night.

I think it was like a Friday night.

And kind of stoked that I was going to go skydiving that Saturday.

So I'm settling down and I'm starting to fall asleep.

And then the voice whispered in my ear,

Five man train.

And it startled me and it pulled me out of my slumber.

And I'm like,

Five man train?

What does that mean?

You know,

I was like,

I didn't have a clue really what that meant outside of any sexual innuendos or anything like that.

So anyway,

The next day I woke up,

Got my gear and drove the hour drive from Virginia Beach out to Suffolk and started to go skydiving.

And I made one jump and then I re-patched my gear and manifested for the next jump.

And as I was walking to the plane,

They have like ten minute calls,

Five minute calls.

But at a five minute call you should be basically all geared up and walking towards the plane.

But these four guys stopped me on the way to the plane and said,

Hey Doug,

Hey you want to do a five man train with us?

And I'm like,

What?

What's a five man train?

And basically it's a skydiving maneuver where basically all five of us are hanging outside of the airplane at the same time.

And we hold each other's legs in one hand and we let go of the airplane and grab the other leg really quickly.

And you make this worm,

Snake-like figure of humans and you fly down in the air and you go as far as you can hold onto it.

Usually you can hold onto it for a few thousand feet but then after that it's just like,

Okay what do we do now?

But it just took me for a minute.

It's like,

Wow.

So I wasn't scared to do the five man train.

But anyway,

What happened was that Friday that this happened to me where I was visited,

A skydiving friend of mine died.

He passed away by skydiving unfortunately.

He had a bad accident which really threw us all because he was a Navy pilot and he flew jets and he would be the last person that you would expect to pass away from skydiving.

But anyway,

He had an accident and died on Friday.

And I wasn't there so I didn't see it or hear about it.

Didn't know anything about it.

And then I'm just like,

Wow,

The next day when I got visited and I realized it was my skydiving friend.

So that tells us a couple things.

You think about it.

Somehow spirits know a little bit into the future.

How could this guy tell me five man train that evening and the next morning or the next day I get approached by four guys and say,

Hey,

You want to do a five man train?

When I know,

I didn't know anything about it,

About what it was or if it was a skydiving move or if we were going to have sex.

That's just one of the stories that happens to me quite often.

Like I said,

Sometimes it's more of a curse than a gift.

But I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

And in a way it's really helped me to understand more about what happens to us when we die and when we pass away.

Because something does happen.

And who knows what happens after that.

But there is an afterlife.

That much we know.

But what I feel is that,

And I don't know this for certain,

I can't say that this is what Doug knows because Doug does not know.

And nobody knows,

Unfortunately,

That is heaven just a waiting place?

Is it just a way station?

Is it,

I mean because the way the religious people talk about heaven,

It sounds very boring.

I don't know if they skydive there.

I don't know if they surf there.

I don't know if anything really cool goes on there.

In fact it sounds quite boring.

But what I've come to realize is that heaven is a peak experience.

I mean the highest peak experience.

And I feel that there's not a lot of people there in reality.

When you die and you pass away and you go to heaven,

There may be ten people there.

Because it's such a high peak.

I think that people don't want to stay there.

I mean it sounds great and all that you'd be sitting and playing the harp for the rest of your life for eternity.

But think about that.

Really for eternity you're going to sit and play harps.

Eternity you're going to sing and dance and praise and just like Alan Watts says,

Every day you'll be like church every single day.

Where would the balance be?

What would bring happiness?

I mean if you have no opposite of sadness,

Then how would you know when you'd be happy and when you'd be sad?

It sounds like there would be no opposites in heaven that's described in biblical terms.

But no,

What I think is that heaven is a peak experience.

Maybe there's a few people up there controlling everything,

Who knows.

But I think that for the most part,

Most people when they pass away,

Whether right away or maybe it might take time,

Maybe things have to be coordinated so that maybe you made promises to somebody in the life you had before you died and now you've got to fulfill that promise.

I don't really believe too much in karma past death.

But then again,

I'm not a firm believer of karma.

I'm more of a firm believer of karma in everyday life happening right away.

So if you do something wrong in this life,

You're already going to pay the price from doing that wrong and suffering the consequences immediately.

You may not know it,

You may not feel it,

But it's going to affect your life in some way that if you do something negative,

If you do something horrible to somebody,

You create this karma,

Then it has to be dealt with and the bank balance has to be paid in this life.

I wouldn't count on paying it in another life,

But I'm not the authority figure on karma for sure.

I'm just a skater kid and a surfer guy that likes to meditate and talk on the microphone.

Anyway,

Thank you guys for taking the time to listen to me go on and on about absolutely nothing.

And that's what all this is.

That's what Alan Watts is doing,

That's what Osho is doing,

That's what I'm doing.

It's a lot to do about nothing.

Because there's no substance to it.

There's nothing you can put your hands on and feel and touch.

Basically all it does is give you a warm and fuzzy.

When you go and meditate nightly,

You go and spend the whole day the next day feeling the right way,

Feeling this positive vibe that everything's beautiful,

Everything's warm and fuzzy,

And everything's in synchronicity and falling into place and life is just beautiful.

That's definitely one of the great things about a spiritual life or pursuing a spiritual life is that it does have that warm and fuzzy.

Anyway,

Thanks again for joining me.

You guys take care of yourselves.

I hope I answered any questions that I may have created by other recordings that I've made.

So you can call this recording a filler in of thoughts and ideas that needed to be portrayed or shared.

But anyway,

Thank you again for joining me.

Y'all take care of yourselves now.

Bye bye.