No sooner did Steve complain, in his "Update" yesterday, that everything seemed blocked, than everything started moving again. I've tried to explain to him that it's already been mapped out, and the timing of the work is following a pre-set course. His job is to be the "man on the ground," the liaison. He has a hand on each pole, as it were, conducting the current. But the pulses come from here. There is only just so much I am allowed to reveal. But the timing is decided upon here.

Steve also complained, as part of this Update, about lack of donations. But donations are tricky. Truthfully, the only donations we want--or should I speak for myself?--the only donations I want Steve to receive, are those where the person owes us a favor, or, where it is given entirely free of strings, which means, with entirely pure motives. Any other types of donations will carry karmic complications with them, and we do not wish to complicate our future.

Our karma is such that we have both abused power and privilege in past lives. We are in the process now of making it up. We don't have very many people owing us favors, to put it bluntly. Steve tries to advance other people's careers even at the expense of his own. He was a strictly honest businessman, turning down or referring work if he saw it was in the client's best interest. That honesty prevented him from succeeding, but he succeeded in wiping out a good bit of that past-life karma. We want to start with as much of a clean slate next time as possible. And while you may think of us as a couple forever separated, that is hardly the case. We have just been given a grace period at the end of Steve's current incarnation, to wrap up some loose ends. We are planning on a very nice "vacation" here, however long or short is permitted, and then we are gearing up for our next incarnation together. It promises to be quite an adventure.

Steve was going to write out, "in character," what I have told him, and as I've said, if we are channeling and he is writing on his own, and he is on-track, I let him run with it. But I cannot tell you, in this public forum, what I've told Steve privately about our upcoming life together. So I had to stop him. Sorry. That's because these journal entries may survive us, and such predictions could become evidential. I was awarded increased permission to provide evidence a little before I started writing these journal entries, and before I helped Steve write our second book, "Loving Abby in Truth and Spirit." (At least, it looks as though that's going to be the title--Steve hasn't thought to ask me if I like it, yet.) But, I am still under careful constraints here as regards the type of evidence I can share with the public. Predictions are not included in what I'm allowed to share, at present.

Steve keeps finding interesting things on Ebay that relate to our history. In addition to the three silver spoons with his initials on them--yes, that was a deliberate "sign" from me, and no, I can't explain fully how that's done by us here--he also found a token, called a "hard times token," from Dover, New Hampshire minted the year we lived there in 1837. These look like pennies but were used, according to the history Steve has read, in lieu of money because of the "Panic," the economic crisis at the time, when people were hoarding money. Steve was about to spend what to him is a lot of money to buy this one, because one side advertises a grocery in Dover, and he thought maybe I might have touched it. He misses me that much :-). I don't want him to spend money we might need for the books on some competitor's advertisement I might have touched. But truthfully, I told him that we used real money. We didn't need those. Our history, the little there is, tells us that Matthew lost his business in Dover. But I have told Steve, in private channeling, that he sold that business.* We used the money to go elsewhere. This was in 1837. Though I have told Steve there was someplace in-between, we next show up in the history with Matthew teaching at a school for mill workers' children, and also we see that he was editor of a weekly magazine called the Salisbury Monitor, published in Salisbury Mills (where the mill workers' families lived). So you see that we had decided to dedicate our lives to serving the poor, and that was primarily my idealism that Matthew was supporting me in and joining me in. All of our youthful idealism is lost in the Whittier history. It only portrays Matthew as some kind of fool who loses his teaching position when the workers pulled their children out of school to work as soon as the mills re-opened. Steve vaguely remembers, as Matthew, that there was rather more to it. Clearly, Matthew was publishing elevating, spiritualist stories, and Abolitionist poems, in a working-class neighborhood. That much we know. From that you can assume he was probably teaching the children some liberal ideas, as well. You can assume that I was also doing charity work, and that we were spreading not only good cheer and financial contributions from wealthy patrons, but liberal ideas, as well--political and theological ideas.

Do you think we might have been shunned for our trouble? Does a bear shit in the woods? (Sorry, Steve loves that one--so did Matthew--and for his sake I must indulge him.)

This was Matthew's story all through his life. He was courageously outspoken, and he tried to help elevate society when society would have none of it. All society wanted was Matthew's humor. It is like a beautiful girl who wants to love and cherish a man, and all he appreciates is her physical beauty (I never had that problem with Matthew, who loved me inside and out). Matthew wryly commented on it in one letter to his brother. It appears to have gone right over his brother's head--because his brother was too secretly arrogant to think that Matthew had real talent. Matthew's style of writing was not "real literature" in those days.

Besides, Matthew made off-color references in his writing--they were quite mischievous, and quite delightful! My personal favorite is the deliberate misspelling, "...like the quills of the frightful konkerbine." (You will get a good look at Matthew's writing in our first book.) But his saintly brother, like society as a whole, would have none of it. And it was his saintly brother who wrote the history. We have written our own history now, with full documentation. It was simply a matter of knowing what to look for.

This first book is a time bomb, not only for the Whittier legacy as it has come down to us, but also for proving reincarnation to society. It is designed for the day, after Steve passes, when new evidence emerges. It has all been planned out here. If Steve has written, for example, of our courtship, from his own past-life memories (stimulated inwardly by me in some cases, but still his memories), and search as he may, he cannot find any diaries which confirm them--and then, after he dies, such diaries emerge--it will be flat-out proof of the reality of reincarnation.

On the other hand, if Steve is able to find those diaries now, and he dutifully reports the matching passages in his book, do you think people will believe him? Therefore it will be much more powerful as evidence if it emerges after his death. So the frustration of not being able to find original sources is planned by us, here, and is necessary. Steve understands this and is playing his part as the "man on the ground."

Now, this entry is as much for the future as for anyone who will be reading it now. Because readers in the future will know that this was real. "Spirit relationships" will be a known option when one member of a couple passes. Reincarnation will be taken more seriously as an option, at least by a significant percentage. I am trying to get Steve to remember an interesting example--that's right, eating fish on Friday.

Steve's Mom, a retired school teacher, mentioned that the custom of eating fish on Friday was instigated to help fishermen financially. It had nothing to do with religion. Steve will now have to pause and look it up online...and he found that there are a lot of explanations, including this one. Basically, it started as a fast day, and wound up as a fish day. And it stuck.

Ideas like "resurrection," and the anathema against the "pre-existence of the soul" are similar. They stuck--and it's very hard to get them unstuck. Like so many barnacles, you scrape them off here and they reattach themselves there. So it may be quite awhile before reincarnation is entirely understood and accepted in Western cultures. Cross-dimensional relationships will be accepted relatively easily, by comparison, because they do not fundamentally conflict with Christian dogma. That is why near-death experiences have gained wide public acceptance (except in the scientific community--you'd have to kill a scientist and bring him back before you could convince him), while reincarnation has been shunned by both the scientists and the Christians.

We are used to shunning. Given the internet and e-publishing, Steve can continue to function with basically no public support at all. He produced a film on $1,300 donations, and that film is having its impact on society out there as we speak. So we don't need outside funding to get the job done. Honestly, if someone with funds to spare were smart, it would be a privilege to contribute to this effort. But it will be too late by the time anyone sees that.

Obviously, we don't need money here, in the astral. We manifest what we need out of the air, as it were, through concentration. It's an art and you get better and better at it the longer you're here. With my four-piece band, I give concerts and we--with help from some friends who are talented artists--manifest an entire natural scene around us, which responds to our music during the concert. I kid you not. It tops any light show you've ever seen. Imagine waves dancing to the music, or trees swaying to it, and you'll get some idea. All of this is done for love--love for each other, and love of artistic expression. We never have to cajole anyone into doing anything by bribing them, which is what money is in the last analysis. All money is bribery. Bribing anyone to do anything they don't already want to do out of love, is in very bad taste here. You can't even set foot in this place if you think like that. You end up somewhere else. Meaning, in a lower sphere. It is all in grades and shades of beauty and meaning (beauty and meaning are intertwined here). Here, we would no more try to induce someone to do something for ulterior motives than the man in the moon. The whole concept is foreign to us.

So when I have to deal with Steve's situation, where he is underpowered and no-one wants to help him, I tell him, let's just find a way to do it ourselves. If no-one wants to help, that is the situation we find ourselves in. Perhaps we are disliked from the previous lifetimes in which we behaved badly toward people we had power over. Let us redeem ourselves by trying to help without outside funding. And so we do.

That being said, there are certain crucial areas we needed help with. Steve needed legal advice about permissions for the first book, the scholarly one--and I made it clear to Steve I wanted whimsical drawings for the second one, about us. Steve did finally get pro-bono legal help with the first, and he found a good artist for the second for a reasonable fee. The permissions, however, may cost more than Steve can afford. We don't know yet. Steve doesn't want to take evidence out of the book, because that weakens the case. This book is like a legal brief. It is intended to prove reincarnation as though it was a legal case. He can't take the "teeth" out of it by removing evidence, merely because someone is too prejudiced or too threatened to allow him to use it for that purpose. So a way must be found.

This is the part where I have to stretch, to deal with limitations in the physical world. Everything in the physical world is dense and slow. Everything is a huge hassle. Everything is constantly falling apart and getting dirty. Just staying alive, for Steve, eats up so much of his time and attention, between his body's needs and the need to maintain shelter. Between having an idea, and manifesting it as a physical thing or situation, there is a huge amount of trouble one must go through. It is so slow! That takes some getting used to, for me. I have been here long enough to have forgotten all that. Even when I was last incarnate, I was raised in a wealthy family. It was only the last five years, as Matthew's wife, that I experienced poverty, and hence, limitation. Serving the poor and being poor, yourself, are two different things. It is not glamorous. It is waking up and trying to figure out how you are going to get through another day.

So Steve is experiencing all of that and trying to do something worthwhile for humanity at the same time, and I am trying to support him in both respects, from here. That's what it's like for me. I had promised to try to describe what our relationship is like from my end, and that's a great deal of it.

So, I have talked your ear off this morning! Steve has tried his best to channel my thoughts faithfully and to stay out of the way during the process. It is my pre-verbal thoughts he is picking up, and he then clothes them in words he feels I might like, to express them. Sometimes he can feel the way I would like something phrased--sometimes it's his own phrasing, as I let him go with it. So, take it that way, and understand that I really am here communicating with you as best I can. We all do our best, in both worlds. Someday our worlds will work together openly, in harmony. Let us all strive for that day!

Love and best wishes to each and all,
Abby