Welcome to
The Afterlife Advocate
A Conversation
about Conscious Dying, Conscious Grieving
and the Journey of the Soul
Issue # 23 - November 2016
Published by The Afterlife Education Foundation,
producer of the Original Afterlife Conference
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Virginia Beach, VA.
November 11-13 2016
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Online Worldwide
Nov. 10-13
with Dr. Karen Wyatt
and special guests
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Los Angeles, CA.
Nov. 20
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Worldwide - Nov. 30
E
arlybird prices end
for the 2017
Afterlife Conference.
Register now
to save $50 on general admission!
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Is Death the New Sex?
Last year there was a widely-circulated news story about a ten year-old boy named
Kyler Bradley
who was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. A news crew filmed Kyler in his classroom surrounded by his friends and a teacher who had instructed the kids to "pray for a miracle."
The news reporter said: "Kyler believes in miracles. So do his classmates. Their teacher planted that idea when she told 30 ten year-olds about Kyler's cancer." One of the children was quoted as saying, "If everybody prays for him, God will listen."
Kyler died six months later, and there was impassioned discussion among the educators and grief counselors in my network about the teacher's strategy for helping her class deal with Kyler's impending death. While prayer as an intervention might have been an acceptable approach in an evangelical church, it had no place in a public classroom, and one has to wonder how the parents of those children dealt with the inevitable question, "Why didn't God listen?"
This story shines a glaring light on the lack of death education in the lives of American children. The school should have called in a counselor to talk to the children about the reality of death, and to prepare them for Kevin's departure. But instead, their heads were filled with magical thinking, which only added extra layers of confusion to their grief process.
Death education in schools is as taboo today as sex education was when I was ten years old, more than 50 years ago. If I was promoting sex education in 1960, I'd probably get arrested. But thanks to the work of bold researchers and social activists, sex education eventually became acceptable. Today, death is following that lead, which makes those of us who are bringing death into the public forum the new Masters & Johnson!
Some would argue that death, like sex, should be discussed at home, not in the classroom. But the problem today echoes the problem that existed in the 1950s. Back then, parents didn't talk to their children about sex, and today, most don't talk about death.
To read more about death education for young children, take a look at this excerpt from
Talking about Dying: Memoirs and Essays
by
Gabriel Moran.
Rev. Terri Daniel, MA, CT
Founder, The Afterlife Conference
Interfaith Chaplaincy, Bereavement Support
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Dismissing the Idea of Eternal Reward or Punishment
by Bishop John Shelby Spong
The major concern in the church with regard to life after death was the imperative necessity to control human behavior on this earth. Originally, there were only two areas in the geography of life after death. By far the most graphic area was hell in which sinners were eternally punished and where the fires burned eternally. Then brimstone was added to heighten the fear and to motivate virtue. To this realm called "hell" were assigned not just the wicked, but also the non-believers, the heretics, the infidels and the unbaptized. The other realm, called "heaven," was constructed as a place of bliss and reward reserved for the virtuous, the saved, those who acknowledged Jesus Christ as savior and who were thus baptized. The church thus added "belief control" to "behavior control." One must not think outside the boxes of orthodoxy if one wanted to be "saved."
READ MORE...
NOTE: Bishop Spong is scheduled to speak at our Afterlife Conference in June, but he recently had a stroke (he's expected to recover about 90-95%).
We're still not sure if he'll be able to make it, but we'll keep you posted.
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wo New Books on the Afterlife
That we Highly Recommend:
A Traveler's Guide to the Afterlife - by Mark Mirabello PhD
If you're interested in exploring humanity's understanding of death and the afterlife from a myriad of cultural and historical perspectives, this will be of great interest to you.
Mark's new book explores death and afterlife beliefs from a wide cross section of cultures and religious traditions throughout history. His publisher sent the book to us for an endorsement this summer, and we loved it so much that we invited him to speak at the 2017 Afterlife Conference (and he said yes).
LISTEN
to this fascinating interview with Mark.
Higher Self Now - by William Buhlman
Here is an interview with our friend
William Buhlman
, an expert on out-of-body journeying and one of the Monroe Institute's most respected teachers. William does a fantastic job of offering simple techniques for astral travel and deep exploration of other dimensions. This book focuses specifically on how to determine the spiritual trajectory we travel in life and in death.
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Death is But a Dream
We are super excited about a new documentary that explores the dreams and deathbed visions of hospice patients, featuring Dr. Christoper Kerr, whose breakthrough research is helping to take afterlife studies out of the realm of pseudoscience and into the mainstream.
Dr. Kerr will be a keynote presenter at the 2017 conference!
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