152. Reincarnated Dogs
/Maybe it was all the talk about the long-forgotten Robson Zoo (and whatever happened to Charlie the Lonesome Cougar, anyway?), or maybe it was our conversation around the Trophy Town documentary on the 1961 Trail Smoke Eaters, or possibly our warm reminiscence of this Christmas just past… But whatever it was, it led us to a long contemplation of the future, specifically the question of whether there is a future after this current turn on the stage of life. KJ has Thoughts, and we wonder whether you do, too.
Is this… is this it?
Links: Shed Dogs; RJ’s Robson Zoo photos; Trophy Town; reincarnation; channeling; tryptophans.
Once again, this week’s artwork was generated by Stable Diffusion, this time using the prompt “3 reincarnated dogs”.
Transcript. The transcript below is low quality and not suitable for reading, but is left here for search purposes.
Got to do some intros. Do some intros. Let's make this the intro. We are introducing ourselves. We are the shed dogs. We are in the shed and you're listening to us. Isn't that awesome? Aren't you excited to be listening to us? You should be, because we're going to talk about some stuff. It's going to be wild. Your ears are just going to cook right off the side of your head. You better start soon before it's too late and you get scared, by the way. Let's go. RJ, you posted pictures from the Robson Zoo Facebook the other day. Those were something else. I didn't even know that zoo existed. And there they've got RJ's dad petting, a cougar, an actual, real cougar. And the kids petting cough. What the hell does it matter? Those were trained cougars for TV shows, for Walt Disney movies. So it really was Charlie the cougar? Yeah, charlie the Lonesome Cougars. Oh, I thought you were just messing around. No, one of two nikki was one and there was one other one. And they trade off, I think, just like child action. If one rip someone's arm off, they give them sack time and put the other one in. Oh, I guess it's break time. Well, what had happened is, in one of those groups, those Facebook groups, maybe this one was trail. Someone posted about the Robson zoo. So I said, okay, well, I'll post some pictures. Those were fantastic pictures, though, I thought. I remember the hearing of the Robson Zoo and it disappeared with the dam. Right. He said it was because they realigned. The highway. Now, that might have been because of the dam. It disappeared in 68 or 66. I think it's 68 was when he took it out of business because the highway no longer passed his place. Just west on the north shore, west of Castle Guard, because I think Robson is the north shore. Right? Just west, yeah. I don't know. But the ferry was there forever and the Brilliant bridge was there forever too. So I don't know what must have happened. There was some kind of realignment that happened. But he was started in 1948. Some wounded animal made its way onto their property. And so they they started taking care of it. And they kind of thought, this is kind of a cool thing. So they got a reputation as being able to care for animals. Listeners, we had a chance to watch an excellent documentary called Trophy Town that Huey of Janelle had sent us. We weren't able to do a live commentary on that because there were some distractions. Buddy, today we're just going to have a quick talk about what a great documentary that was. PJ, take it away. Well, I don't know. It was pretty great. I actually had heard a whole bunch of that stuff, but there was a bunch of detail in there that I didn't know. What was it about? Trail smoke eaters. 1961 that wins the World Hockey Championships. Since then, all the teams that have won have been national level teams right prior to 61. And I think in 39, the Smokies won World Championships in both those years, I think certainly in 61 they did. And they're just a local team, and they go all the way up and they win the Allen Cup. So the Allen Cup used to be western Canadian. I think it was maybe Canadian Amateur Championship. And they win that. I think they win it. Or did Chatham beat him but couldn't send a rep? I can't remember how it went, but basically when you won, you had the opportunity to represent Canada at the Worlds, but it was kind of on your lookout, you know. Good luck raising the money. Have a nice trip. Like in 1939, they just went to it wearing Smoke Eaters jerseys. Yeah, in 61, I think they went wearing Canada jerseys at least, you know. So I didn't kind of know all of that. And really, what I didn't know, too, was Norm lenardin. So when I was a kid, a lot of those guys sort of came and went with us. We were playing on the local team, and like, Norm Lenardin was an assistant coach, slash trainer with us for a few years. There was a few of those guys that did stuff like that. Dave Rosnell's son Kevin played with us for a few years, so Dave Rossnell was around all the time. And actually Dave Rossnell ran with my brother Sam up in Pine Point for a few years. And we used to also play I think we've talked about this before, but we used to play exhibition games against those guys once a year. It was like an old timers game. They would get however many of the guys were around and could still play and play us, and they usually beat us, just would beat us. The thing that struck me was, at that time, I would have been between 15 and 20 years old, and I thought they were all old men, and we should be able to beat these guys easily. They're old, ancient. At that time, they would have been in their early, early to late thirty s. Over the course of time. I played those exhibition games against them. They were still in their 30s by and large. Right. I thought they were old, and they were just really good. And you would talk to them, too, and they would tell you stuff like, oh, not very often. They say, oh, like those European guys. Oh, man, you know. Yeah. No, they're not. They don't fight and everything, but boy, stick work. They're just really, really brutal with their sticks, you know, a lot of spearing, lot of butt ending lot, all that kind of those kind of and at the time, I remember just thinking, just nothing. You don't really kind of get it into your head. These guys played at a world international level. They played the top teams from several European countries and beat them all. And in 61, I think they beat them handily, too. They didn't I don't know. And then during the video, it was just fun to see all the interviews with all these old faces that I haven't seen since the 70s. Yeah. The these guys that we used to play against now grown very old. Most of those guys have passed, I think, since that thing was made. Yeah. But, I mean, some would still be alive, probably. Yeah. And I remember dad talking about it quite a bit and always hearing about that the Trail Smokeys were world champions, even though it was way back in 61. Of course, we were only hearing about that. Well, you guys were living you were living in Roslin at the time. I was oblivious to it. I was four years old when they became I didn't even know anything about that until about 69, 70. Yeah. Okay. So people mentioned it, but then you learn how it happened. How it happened in the first place was that Kamenko wanted to attract some high end hockey players. Is that right? Well, there was a league, and it was the WIHL Western International Hockey League, and all the Kooteni's teams had teams in it. So kimberly Creston I think Spokane probably out of Bocan. That's hence international. A lot of them had teams, and it was semi professional. Like, these were full grown adult guys, and they were paying crowds, and it was a civic pride thing. Right. Yes. And so Rossland had a team, and Trail had a team, and all kinds of them had teams, and they recruited, and they were still doing it when I was still living in town. Right. Kaminco would have them. The deal was yeah. That Camino would basically give these guys jobs, which were not necessarily easy to get at the time. No. And they're good paying job, good payings and everything. One of the things they did for the 61s that they was a real thing, you see it in the video is they paid their salary while they were in Europe. Right. Which is for those guys, was huge. They couldn't afford to give up two, three weeks a month. They're on a trip of a lifetime. And it's paid for well, actually, the salaries were paid, but they had to fundraise for all their transport and hotel. Right. It was all done by kind of local subscription. Yeah. And Roslin would have participated in that because a whole bunch of not bunch, but a few of the players that were on that team had played for the warriors, ross and warriors in the late 50s. Right. And they went with so Rosslyn Warriors were a senior team originally, which is why the team I played with was always called the Rosslyn Junior Warriors because we were a junior team. They were the senior team. Same. And Nelson. And it's an age distinction. Yes. And basically, if you turn 20 before January 10, you could still play junior. Okay. And after that, you could play senior for as long as you could play. And Rosslin was junior B. That's the team I played. Maybe the whole British Columbia was b. No, they weren't. They had A teams and AAA, they had a much higher level of competition in other parts of the province than what I played. And Trail still had a senior team on it. They had the Junior Smokies, and they had the Senior Smokies right at the same time. And they still have a senior team. Yeah, they may still have a junior for all I know, as well. And they went junior A as well. That league for a while. So there's kind of a big mix. And yeah, Kaminco was all the municipalities were pretty serious about it. Kimberly dynamiter. Same thing. Sponsorship. I don't know who sponsored Cranberg's team, but they Royals, I believe they were called. Nelson, Maple Leafs all sort of sponsored. And that was at the time, the route to the NHL was out of those kind of teams all across Canada, guys that were just had regular jobs, they played these things and they got a little bit of money, but very little. Not enough to live on at all. But that was the route to the NHL, I believe. They didn't have a junior system. They had other semi pro teams that the NHL franchises owned that you could play for listeners. This aired on TSN, and I think they'll probably show it from time to time. Yeah, if you do see that, it'll be called Trophy Town. It was pretty great. It was really fun, too. In the videos, you see the different arenas. They're just ridiculous. Like, there wasn't very standardized size, there wasn't very standardized way. The boards were made. Like, the boards were different heights and the corners were different sharpnesses. Some of them were outdoor. Even the weather is warm, and you see in the video there's pools of water and they just have to play. Wow. And this was international competition, right. Like, this is the bigs I just thought, Whoa, Dinah. And I even remember the nets back in the day. They made the nets with a big hunk of netting hanging down inside the net. The idea was if you fired a shot, that hanging down piece of netting would decelerate it and just allow it to drop. Well, they don't do that anymore because they found out that players have a tendency in a collision to get tangled up in that netting and break limbs as a result. So they stopped putting it in nets. It was all full of things like that. And I'm sure I'm mixing this up, and it might have been in 1939. And the reason the 39 Smokies went to the world is because the actual winners of the nationwide Tournament was, I think Chatham is how you pronounce it, Ontario. And they just couldn't come up with the dough to send their guys. I thought that was 61. It might have been. I just can't remember which way it went. But somebody, some city that had a chance to send there, they had the best team in Canada and they couldn't send them to the Worlds because they just didn't have the money. And some official is actually shown on Mike saying how he doesn't think worth sending trail. What could they possibly do? Yeah, the head of the Canadian whatever. Yeah. Kind of pejorative like this stupid BC people. Yeah. Because and then they go on to win the whole thing. Yeah. So, I mean, spoiler alert, by the way. Well, and you kind of think, how does Western separatism get its roots? It's crap like that. Some guy in Toronto and he just kind of thinks if you're not from Toronto or Montreal or Ottawa, maybe on a bad day, you're not going to be able to have a team that can compete internationally. Because Canada's international presence is Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Right. They really just another piece of that. Tell us, Mr. Lilbaum, in the world of hockey, there was an NHL at that time and was there some sort of worlds as far as the NHL caliber? No, because at that time international competition was quote unquote, amateur. So there wasn't any okay, so there was the Olympics, there was this annual hockey thing, but you had to kind of be amateurs, I believe is what the idea was. Even though these guys all had jobs and the jobs were essentially just a platform from which they could play hockey. And even though I'm sure you guys remember all the debate around the Olympics and the Soviet hockey teams of the era, people said, well, they're really professionals. They get all their living paid for by the state. It was a big thing because the Canadians were sending amateurs. Pure gold hearted amateurs, my butt. They all had jobs where they were given unlimited time off for practice and for games and all the rest of it. Right. There were always shades of gray all along. Yeah. And then that's why at some point the Olympics had a policy change. What was that about 30, 25 years ago where they said, hey, whatever game people could be, let's do basketball and have the pros play. Yeah. They finally caved because it's just money. Right? Yeah. The gray area became so huge that they just go, we give up. Yeah. So do you know if in Russia there was a league above who the Canadians played? I don't think so. I think they played well. No, I don't think so. That was the top. Yeah, it was just the top Russian team. I don't know how they established their topness, though. Like in Canada, you had people competing for regional cups, regional championships and then national championship. I don't know whether they did the same thing in the USSR or whether they just said they got a bunch of brainiacs together to just pick the best 20 players in the whole place and put them on a team. Yeah, but it makes sense that they would play regionally just for yeah, and I'm sure they've got leagues and everything, but I just don't know how they established who went to represent the USSR. Fascinating. Whole thing was pretty interesting, though. Yeah, it was great. Interesting to use the word topness, though. Of course, the real term for that is topnotatude topography. So thank you, Hughie, for that. Yeah, it's fun to see the crowds, like the Trail crowds, and just how you imagine because we used to go down to the Trail games and just the smell. I can still smell that arena. I can feel that the reflective cement that they had. I hated that ring. Yeah. But I'm into that because we'd always get our butts. You were a player down there. I remember that smell, though. Yeah. If Brother Tom of Trail hears this, which I think he probably will, he must tell me if he remembers my dad, like, anything around our family about that. Because my dad was a hockey player when he was younger, I would have thought that he would be, like, all over. That probably was. But I certainly don't remember anything about it. Dad talked about it all the time. It was pretty remarkable. And I mean, in spite of all the negative stuff I say about Trail, they really do have a seriously rich sports heritage in that place. You look at curling, you look at hockey, baseball, baseball, they really have turned out a lot of top end out. The Little League Trail team won at least two or three track and field, just all kinds of different things. They really punch above their way. Probably gave those Little Leaguers jobs at Kamenko. Yeah, for sure. Walking on top of those steel pots. It's funny, too, because some of those players would have been working in the tank rooms and stuff like that. Places where you get leaded places. Just nothing. You just think nothing of it. Serious poison goes on. I did enjoy that one shot of the tank rooms. Sort of obviously prer time. Right. We'd come quite a ways to 1974. Yeah. They didn't have cranes at all. Yeah. And they were just stripping it right there and then, wow. Just put it on a trolley that they push by hand. Like I say, the sea in the faces was something else, too. Those guys it's just surprising how recognizable. I only saw those guys once a year for about six years. Five or six years, most of them, except for guys like Russell on them. But a lot of those guys recognizable from seeing them on the ice. Yeah. See that guy heads up around him, because if you have your head down, he's going to launch you into the next life. They had a couple of guys. I mean, they were really good hockey players, right. And they actually beat us even though they backed off somewhat in some areas because we played a full contact game with them. You said you did finally beat them, though. We did. The year we won our division was the best team I was on. We had a really good team, and we did finally beat them for two or something, but by that time they were more like getting on. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure all of those guys only played once a year. Put them on for that one game. All right, now, KJ, you have added an entry here that is very recent. Okay, so the topic is death and dying. Yes, yes. Okay. So it's just because we are of an age. I just lost a buddy within the last two weeks to Alzheimer's, like really fast Alzheimer's, which was I kind of knew that he was headed that way, but I didn't think it was so devastating. Well, hang on. How do you lose someone to Alzheimer's? Did your buddy end up in a situation where they died from physiological manifestations of the disease? Yes. How does that work? Like just unable to breathe anymore or whatever? It eats your brain, I think. Yeah. The progression is basically you lose your high order brain function first. Yeah. But if it goes on long enough, you lose your low order involuntary function next. And involuntary includes heartbeat, respiration. The whole night just goes your body just shuts down, literally. It just surprised me that it happened that fast. I was quiet while you were saying that because I was thinking, what is this, a couple of weeks, a month? I had no idea that it could go like that. None. I thought the minimum was like a year. Oh, no, no, no, no. He died a couple of weeks ago is what I'm saying. Yeah, but how long did he have it for, do you know? Two years, maybe. Wow. Well, at least that's in the realm of at least. I've heard of that before. Yeah, I thought you're talking like a month. No, it just really surprised me because we know John Mann of Spirit of the west had early onset Alzheimer's, and he dealt with it for certainly five years or seven years, like full into it and everything. But he lasted that long, even though he was very young when he got it to start. But this death was really fast anyway. And it's not just that. It's all around us. Parents, if any, are still alive. You hear all sorts of people looking after their parents. Just what happens when we die. That's sort of what I'm thinking about. I have a certain idea, or I've had a certain idea of what happens, but then when you get closer, I think that sort of changes like, oh, maybe it's not as clear cut as I thought it was, that for sure. This happens to everybody. But now I'm starting to think, well, what if you die and that's it, that's it. Everything just stops as far as you and your existence was concerned, and there is nothing afterwards. I have not had that thought. Really? Yeah. I don't think like that. In all this time, you haven't thought that. I'm just starting to think that now for some reason, see, that's different. That's very different because there's a progression amongst people who are maybe atheists or really don't believe that anything's after death. There's a progression for them of as they get more and more old, suddenly thinking maybe there is something else. And yet in your situation, you're not convinced either one way or the other, I imagine. But you're considering the possibility. Well, I think that I have a lot of information, and I would call some of it facts. For instance, the neurosurgeon who has the stroke. Have you seen that Ted Talk? It's a brilliant TedTalk. She is a neurosurgeon and she has a stroke and she knows exactly what is going on with her body. And she can kind of step outside and go, oh, look what is happening. And she goes through this whole almost to the gates of heaven kind of revelation with what is going on in her I don't know if you want to say it her brain, but certainly her existence, her soul is going through this whole thing. And it's just fascinating because she has the wherewithal to describe it because she can look at it being a neurosurgeon. Right. And I've had what I would consider communication with the dead, like direct communication, which a soul retrieval was on my list. And when I was experiencing soul retrieval, at the same time, I had this communication with somebody who had just died. And so it's very real to me, I think. And so I think, oh, well, we don't just stop. Like things carry on. And I assume, I think from all my information, this is what I would say before I was starting having these due thoughts is that everybody just goes to heaven, if you want to call it that. Everybody just dies. And then they go to the place, the existence, and then they figure out, like, I think Judgment Day is, or I have the information that Judgment Day is real. And what happens is when you die, you're in a place where you look at your whole life and you do your own judging and you figure out what you're supposed to learn by that, and then you pick your new parents and then you start again. And we are reincarnated constantly over millennia. And so that's what I'm expecting. But then all of a sudden you go, well, what if all those other people are right and there is just zero? So is that doubt like what's spawned that doubt exactly is just the overwhelming opinions of others or what happened. Well, it's just that because we're getting closer to it, I'm losing my confidence in my so is it just fear? Like, is it just growing fear? That's what it is. Where before I thought, well, I'm good, I'm really good with death and dying because there is really nothing to fear as far as what I've gleaned over the years. See, and it is interesting, just as RJ pointed out, most people do the other they go along assuming there is nothing, no consciousness, no existence of any form after this one, because it's kind of like so many other things that you don't worry about when you're young, right? I can do whatever I want when I'm young. This disease or that disability or that ailment isn't going to get me because it's like decades, it's infinite far away. When you've traversed infinity like we have because we're now old and in the eyes of our 20 year old cells, this is an infinite amount of time since then. Then you start to think, now, wait a second, hang on, really? When I finally get there, that's going to be it? Does that really mean I have only whatever time I think I got left to settle all my scores, to make myself right, to make all my relationships right? Really? There must be an after. I think there's an afterlife. I think that I'm going to have another shot, that I really think that is the much more common progression. And maybe it's just a function of but maybe the progression is you're thinking a certain way through life and now you're becoming more open to what are the other things? That could be any number of things. Right? I was going to say maybe it's like switching polarity. You've spent the bulk of your life on one polarity and then as you approach it, it doesn't matter what that was, whether you believe or don't believe in an afterlife, you switch towards the end because you're facing the end and just wondering what yeah, maybe, I don't know. So do you think that you just said, do I have to take care of all my business before the end? Does that imply that you think that you do get another chance and you can come back and revisit some of the stuff that you didn't take care of? No, the implication of that thinking was that you have come to the conclusion that you don't get another chance and that if there are issues or problems or questions or relationships that you want to address before you no longer have a chance, you have your time on this planet and this go round to do it. Yeah, but does that not imply that there's the other option, that you do get to do it the next time around? Well, there is. If you've spent your life believing there's nothing after this and you get towards the end and you think, oh, jeez, really? It's just lights out, game over. I'm not going to get a chance to improve myself as a person. I'm not going to get a chance to right some of the wrongs I may have committed. Dada. Daddy. Then you start thinking, maybe there is an afterlife and maybe I do get to change what I'll be reincarnated into and maybe I will get to evolve as a human, only I won't be conscious of it, but I'll still be doing that evolution. Maybe that's why you start thinking that when you get old, because the prospect of not mattering as much as a grain of sand or a mode of dust is just too overwhelming. Right, right. I think I'm going to withhold my belief on that at the moment because I don't want to have to face an angry God if I'm wrong. There's that angle as well. Some people might get quite worried towards the end that I better kind of get in line here if they've bought into the relentless Christian message and other religions, that if you don't do that, then there's the Hell or there's the Purgatory or whatever, and hence the switching polarity thing. Well, there's sort of a belief that there is no afterlife, that all of brain functions are just synapses and chemicals and physical, which is kind of where I'm at. But that's one pole. But the other pole is actually a myriad. Yes, I believe that's correct. There's not just either range of options at the other end. Yeah, well, there is like I'm not sure who it is. Is it Abraham? One of the big guys in the Bible? Big Old Testament hitters who led a debauched life and then confessed at the end, asked for forgiveness and all his sins were absolved? And if you're sort of getting old and think, oh, jeez, I haven't taken care of that. Please, God, please, I did this. Don't you think that God, I mean, if that's what you believe, kind of goes, now, wait a second, this is the righteous gemstones. This guy's doing all this terrible stuff and then he has his little prayer session to God and of course he talks out loud so you can hear what he's saying. He's talking about forgiveness and how important it is. Right, so just the idea his private prayer session. Yeah, he's private. In this case, he's private and he's still praying. Right. But he is asking for forgiveness because he knows what he's doing wrong. Yeah, he totally knows. And looks to me, transactional, he gets to do whatever he wants and then he has these lovely prayer sessions where he says, I'm so happy that you're a forgiving God. I feel like it's just covering your bases and a lot like, you know what? I have never been to church and I've never believed life's good, but, you know, it's time just in case. I think it's now time yeah, Father, skip the bullshit. I just want to confess in case just get straight through to confession to make it clear I don't believe any of this shit. Now give me for not believing. It the problem, isn't it? The all almighty and powerful and seeing God knows that you're just doing this and it's the Get out of Jail free card. And maybe you don't get that get out of free jail card because he's an all seeing God. He knows that you're just doing this as an insurance policy. And it is hard for me personally because I'm me personally to not ascribe things like hell and purgatory and get out of jail free praying and everything to man made implements to profit financially. Like for hundreds of years you could buy off God. The church would just tell you if you got enough dollars, go nuts. You can just buy your way off. Honest to God, everything will be fine. It'll be great. And come on, that's nonsense and you're threatening people. Behave or you'll be punished forever. Look, it's an all seeing God. Let God take care of that. Don't worry. All seeing God, he'll take care of all the guys who are doing awful stuff and not carrying it. But no man has to get involved so that they have to be the middleman, right? Like I just think but KJ, this stuff you're talking about, I haven't heard much about and it sounds way more appealing to me like the self judgment at the end of Judgment Day. Kind of like in performance reviews, write your own performance review and then based on that, you start over. Now, presumably in this world you start over but you lose all recollection of previous lives. Yes. And then there's the odd case where the little five year old is drawing a fighter plane at the end of World War II, right? He's in the something and he knows exactly how this plane hit this or that blew up and there's all that. So I think, yeah, you lose it all and then you start over. But your soul doesn't lose it all. It's just your mind loses it. All. Right? And you start over. And I've read or looked at what is called the Michael Group. This is one of those things in the 70s where a group of people decide to play with a Ouija board. It sort of reminds me of a bridge game, right? There's eight couples or something, they come and they're just doing this. I think they start with two Ouija boards and then two the couples drop out. But the two couples that are left, they seem to be getting some sort of answer to questions that they seem as little bit strange and they keep doing it and they discover this entity called the Michael Group. And the Michael Group goes on and these people do it. They actually make Ouija boards with metal little legs planchets. Thank you. PJ. So they wouldn't wear them out because they were wearing them. Because they literally spell out, like, letter by letter. Right. So they'd be dragging it around. Yes. ABCD anyway, the Michael Group talks about that. That's what we're here for. We were a spark from the great universe zapped onto this earth at a certain time. And then that spark, like, from Adam and Eve, basically. And they even talk about that. We continue, we grow, we live as a male, female, rich, poor, whatever. We do that and we learn. Whatever we learn and we start again. Actually, at the end of one of their books, they go through I won't get into it, but I bought into that. And I have no reason not to believe that that's exactly there's a great I don't know if it's called a meme, but it's one of those things like the ten things that Buddha says. And the first thing is that everything in life is a lesson you're only here to learn. And once you learn, you'll go on to your next life and learn that it's rather sort of spot on to what I think, and that there is no difference between you and me or us and somebody anywhere in the world, billionaire or some homeless person on Hastings, there's no difference between us. We have the same manifest energy and how we interact in this world. That's where we learn our shit. Right. It varies from our exposure. And mostly well, I think that you do when you're off there on the other side, you do search and pick your parents. Knowing those parents will, odds are, put you into a life that will teach you what you need to learn this time around. Because you go on stages and steps. That's one of the things I believe in. There's other stuff. But you've had this recent worry that, well, what if there really is nothing afterwards? Yeah, I used to read channeling magazines. Oh, right. That was a big thing. It was a big thing for me. In the there was a lot of discussion about people who were able to channel. Well, for me, it was in the was sort of I went through let's look for God and Channeling, and I got the subscription and there's probably one of those magazines in here someplace. And I remember on that long ago, ogre of Nelson saw a magazine and he sort of derisively said, you read that kind of shit. And I thought, oh, like, all of a sudden inside I was going, oh, I'm bad for doing that because obviously something's not right. But I was certainly well into it at the time. But then you can go of anything like that. You can even say it of Scientology, perhaps. Oh, sure, yeah, I draw the line at Scientology. But what if all these things are right? If it's not a money making scheme, nobody's out to make money and it's just that they think is universal knowledge. But what if it's just somebody's little fantasy? And so maybe that's where I am. Yeah. If it's all true, then my essential self probably needs to do a better job next time because at the moment, I'm not believing it's all true. So if the secret to existence is the belief that it's all true, that an afterlife is true, and that it should dictate many of your behaviors in this life yeah, all that stuff, then my essential self that was making choices for this go round didn't get it right. No, I disagree. Skin I think you got everything right. I guess you're going to have the argument that says no matter how awful it is, you got it right. Yeah. Everything that's passed is correct. It has to be correct because it is. And thus you learn by it. And your soul goes back into the other side and says, okay, how do we improve on that? And part of that is choosing your parents. Yeah, well, yeah. I assume for the best opportunity to work on whatever you're working on, because there's a lot of things to work on. Yeah, you could choose your parents. You could purposely choose a couple of parents who are drug addicts because you're thinking you need this kind of challenge for whatever reason in your life. Or you could choose some super wealthy parents who turned out had very little morals. Or you could choose just these amazing, perfect couple and kind of have an awesome upbringing. Maybe. But at the end of the whole thing, you're choosing some parents who are thinking consciously and even though they themselves have been through many iterations throughout time, they don't necessarily have any kind of spiritualism new. So you're kind of starting over every time. You're not building on it, but your soul isn't. Your soul has been there forever, but somehow each time ends up in one of these. Somehow it has not made a perfect selection in an infinite number of iterations. It hasn't made a perfect selection. It hasn't completed the learning. By the way, what does happen when you do finally connect all the dots? I don't think there is a nirvana. Is there is that I think is there a goal to I believe there is. I think that you you move up a level. Oh, each time a level. No, each time. I mean, we're talking thousands of years. Yes, hundreds of lives. And then once you get to where you've done all your business, then you step up and you don't come back to the physical world. Okay. The entity in the Michael group is made of 1050 souls that are no longer of this material planet. That's how that's how they did. That's all there is right now, 1050 in that. Okay. And that's the entity that chose to talk to these people. Okay. Fascinating. I think, I don't know, like I said, I feel like if that is all actually happening, soul me needs to do a better job, I think is probably me. But I think, I mean, where I'm going, we're exposed to so many different thoughts in these regards throughout a lifetime, either directly through religion or through philosophy or through just chats, like this emotion. And then I can just see that in those final moments when, you know, like, dad knew he was going to die and he knew it was going to be within a few days. And to this day, I don't know if he was joking when he looked at me and said, I'm going to go up and I'm going to see your grandfather. Because he was always tongue in cheek throughout his entire life and just a confirmed atheist for sure. So was that his last little tongue in cheek thing to us? I'll never know. But I could just see even so, if you're like committed atheist, I could just see all that cultural exposure in those last few days, the immensity of you disappearing, that your mind is going to just flip into. I just think the emotional load of your entire existence. You just think about when you're put under anesthetic, you don't dream, you're just gone. You're not there, period. And you just sort of think, I wonder if end of life is like that. It's like being under anesthetic and just never coming out. But I also think about Asian cultures and the tradition of their ancestors and how they honor their ancestors, not like we do, and that it's really quite specific to an afterlife. And that I think they sort of expect more, that they will go see their mother and they will go see their father. I mean, even if I don't know, it's just funny to watch. That's just another Korean society thing that you pick up and just how much that is involved in their whole existence. Yeah, the whole business of ancestors and pleasing them in this life and all that kind of business. And the mixture of Christianity and Buddhism, how they blend that together, which was also fun. I think that this should be an ongoing conversation if things change. Yeah, I guess. I suppose it also depends on how long we're doing this podcast because there's like people close to us that will start, I think, when it gets renamed to Shed Dog. We'll have a conversation about how we're feeling. Then all of a sudden, I feel like pursuing T shirts is rising in importance. We got to get those T shirts out while there's still anybody who might buy them. Okay. So we will revisit this from time to time as events happen in our lives, if we lose others or think about more thoughts. I think we should. And absolutely we encourage anybody listening who has anything to say about this right in. And it doesn't matter whether you find it tiresome to hear us talk about. Doesn't matter whether you have strong opinions. Either way, I'd like to hear them. Doesn't matter. Just I'd like to hear if you have any kind of response to any of this. Yeah. Now, listeners, we didn't get to listener mail this episode, but please do keep writing because we will catch up. And they're great. I'm getting turkey stew tonight. That should cause me to fade even more. Yeah. Here's a thought for everybody, too. So, I had vegan Christmas dinner with the girls. It was big success this year. I noticed that after we finished eating, I felt pretty sleepy. I started thinking, yeah, do these guys inject tryptophan into the fake meat? No. I've read that that whole tryptophan thing is false. Is it a figue? And it has a lot to do with having a big, satisfying meal and maybe the carbs that you have in the meal as well. Oh, nice answer, RJ. I think you might be right, because we all had that sort of feeling. I remember one particular Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner where I think it was probably Thanksgiving. The next day at work, I was just walking around like I was high all day long, just feeling great. I was attributing it to the tryptophans. I thought it was just sleepy. I would be sleepy. Well, this year, Christmas Eve, we did a prime rib with the family, the extended family, and we cooked the turkey on Christmas Day. But it was just the immediate family, and it's like you don't have to even get out of your pajamas. Apparently, it's our new tradition. Nice. It was so great. It was the least anxious Christmas I have had as an adult. Because you were talking earlier about the anxiety over gifts. Yes. And for whatever reason, I was ready. Things just fell as they should. That was great. Yes. Sue did a lot of that prep work. I put the Christmas playlist on random shuffle, and the family, none of them complained, which is great. I got to have my Christmas music and nobody complained. But I think part of the reason nobody complained was I finally got around to just culling all the sappy stuff, and so then it's only more interesting stuff, and of course, Charlie Brown Christmas, stuff like that. We've toiled our way through an afternoon of tremendous effort to bring you the highest quality entertainment anyone can conceive. By now, I'm sure your mouth is hanging open, and that's good. That's what we're here for. That's what we do. It's who we are. Tell your friends. Tell them soon. We got to get out of here. Talk to you later. Thanks for listening. Good night. Good night. Good night, buddy.