The thing that’s difficult about these visits is that we go to the same hospital where I delivered Liam. I had been down those halls many times, and often in the recent past, being here brought only bad news.

In the darkened room, the ultrasound technician, a nice elderly lady, asked me if it was my first pregnancy, and I said no. I told her my history, that it would be my 5th pregnancy, with no previous live births. She asked if all of my losses were first trimester, and I told her that I had a stillbirth at 36 weeks.

She was very sympathetic, and she held my hand as she pressed the device against my belly. The image appeared on a monitor, and I could see right away that there was one gestational sac, and that the baby was there. The technician said without pause, “And there’s the heartbeat!”

I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. My husband smiled and tugged at my hand, and I smiled back at him. Finally, after over a year, a heartbeat, a living baby, a life growing inside me!

I continued to look at the screen, and then I saw it. A fast little flicker in the middle of the baby’s body. The technician measured the heartrate, 182 beats per minute, fast and strong. The baby was measuring 8 and half weeks, a little large, which is also a good sign and means he or she is growing well.

We texted his mother to tell her the good news. Then we went for my prenatal check-up with my obstetrician. Our next appointment is in a month, where another ultrasound will be performed.

I am still a bit nervous, because we’re not out of the woods yet. It’s still quite early. But at least I can continue to hope for a healthy baby with a strong and good heartbeat.

No one can tell you you’re in love. You just know it. Through and through. Balls to bones.

A person who has not yet experienced love and asking for a description of love is more or less like the blind asking a sighted person to describe the color blue.

The color blue can be defined somewhat precisely — it is a primary color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm.

Blue as an abstract concept can also be related to certain objects which have a propensity to be blue. Its common connotations are ice, water, sky, winter, boys, cold, calm, and peace.

The blind person can approximate a feeling of blue, but may never come to fully understand what the color blue is. For instance, snow is white, and since the blind person can experience the coldness of snow, snow can become associated with blue. This is of course glaringly incorrect to someone who is sighted.

Once upon a time, I was like the blind when it came to love. I had experienced facsimiles of love, but they were not the real deal.

True love can be “blind” to physical flaws but be gifted with clear insight into inner beauty. As Shakespeare wrote: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind / And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. However, love does “see,” not with the physical eyes, but with a metaphysical sight.

What my husband and I share is a deep love of each other’s minds, hearts and souls. We do not focus on the flesh, although we do not ignore its importance. We do not argue or fight. There are no power plays between us. A lot of the things other couples struggle with, we do not. We are open and honest with each other, and we have a lot of mutual respect and adoration.

Before I met him, I didn’t think this type of relationship existed. I knew a few couples who had something like this dynamic, but I always believed, rightly or wrongly, they probably had tons of issues. I didn’t know what a truly good, healthy relationship was. I was like a blind person trying to understand colors. It didn’t matter how many times it was described to me, I didn’t have the visceral experience.

I think there’s a level of spiritual development necessary for a healthy relationship. He taught me a lot about spirituality and how to balance the self, and I happened to be a good student. The teacher also learns, and the student also teaches. We both grew a lot through our being together.

Many relationships are about possession, control, or having the “upper hand.” If you let go of that dynamic, you can have a relationship that is incredibly loving, but without the damaging aspects of trying to control another person. You love in a way that is freely given, freely received, freely and mutually flowing, and transcending personal ego and desire to change the other person.

When both people love in this manner, you create a love that is infused with the joy and wonder of the universe itself. It is an amazing, spiritual and transcendant love.

It is love that comes with clear sight and bright vision, seeing the full spectrum of beautiful colors.

I end with this wonderful quote from an older, wiser man named Mr. Munson:

I do know this–love is a circuit. You feel it and send it out, perceive its reception by your lover, and accept and acknowledge your lover’s returning it to you, where again they signify its importance, not simply that they love each other but also the other loves them, and in this endless cycle love does indeed expand forever, is constantly replenished, is living, being such a natural part of the universe that its gravity bends the light as it approaches, continually rising into that light until it becomes it.

These types of memory lapses seem rather common:

Pregnancy shuffles what gets your attention. “You only have so many shelves in your brain so the top three are filled with baby stuff,” Brizendine says.

Your IQ doesn’t change, but your priorities sure do.

I’ve been forgetful and preoccupied, and it’s been harder for me to focus on the task at hand. When we went grocery shopping, I forgot a bunch of important items, even though I can normally just keep track of them in my head. When I was cooking earlier, I couldn’t even remember what I normally put into the stew as ingredients. Things that seemed so simple even two weeks ago are suddenly difficult.

Apparently this pregnancy brain thing has another function — I have completely forgotten what it was like in my previous pregnancies. I asked my husband if I had certain food cravings or aversions with my other pregnancies, because I could not remember. I also had to try very hard to remember the various aches and pains that I had experienced with previous pregnancies.

I’m reading through some of my old blog posts from when I was pregnant with Liam. This time, I’m also craving fruit, disliking leftovers and feeling nausea. What I wrote seem so familiar and quite applicable to what I’m feeling now, yet I cannot remember writing those words.

Maybe the brain forces the woman to forget the issues associated with pregnancy so that we would want to get pregnant again?

It is often said that pregnancy lasts 9 months. Aside from the shortest months, each month contains about 4 and half weeks. The weeks of pregnancy are counted from the first date of last menstrual period (LMP), and the expectation is that the average pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

I’m in the middle of week 5, with 34 and half weeks to go. That is 242 more days, assuming everything goes well. And for me, that is a big assumption.

I’ve had four previous pregnancy losses. One ectopic pregnancy in the fallopian tubes at 7 weeks, two miscarriages at 9 and 12 weeks, and a stillbirth at 36 and half weeks. None hurt quite as much as the stillbirth, because I had gotten so close and felt it was going to be a sure thing. But they all hurt.

Right now, I am cautiously waiting. I know there is always the possibility of another loss. Because of my history I have a 1 in 4 chance of early miscarriage and a higher chance of repeat ectopic pregnancy. It’s still too early to tell, but I hope the little bean, as we have taken to call the embryo, is healthy and developing well.

My first doctor’s appointment is in another 2 and half weeks. I will have an ultrasound then to determine gestational age and assess the health of the baby. It will be a long wait. I feel paranoid that it will be another sad day, though I fervently hope that there will be a heartbeat, that it will be in the right place, and that everything will be okay.

A person’s voice conveys a lot about personality and demeanor. My husband was also attracted to my voice right away, and he said I sounded cute, sweet, shy and nice. Although, I very much dislike my own voice.

In Dune, the Bene Gesserit have a concept called “the Voice,” using their vocal talents to persuade and compel others to follow commands. It’s quite interesting. I feel there is definitely something energetically deeper going on about voices and tones.

I come from an Asian culture (Chinese) that takes for granted the fact that women will cook, clean and stay thin after marriage. But the idea of giving the husband kindness and love verbally is still not common. I watched women do all kinds of chores for their husbands, but also frequently nag, criticize and complain.

I was verbally berated by my mother all the time and decided from a young age to not do it to others, especially not those I love. I knew how much it hurt because it was done to me. People say “sticks and stones may wound me but words don’t hurt,” but Bush has a song with the lyrics “you have broken me… nothing hurts like your mouth.”

As women, one of our gifts is in our Voice; we can cut/wound/insult/attack with words, or we can nurture/heal/support/love with words. In my past, my darkest moments, I did think hurtful thoughts, but I tried not to utter them out loud. There were instances where I failed and intentionally hurt someone with words, but I regret them. I don’t want to gossip or badmouth other people because talking trash behind someone’s back makes me uncomfortable.

The other important thing to realize, which is difficult to convey over the text medium, is that tone of voice matters. The exact same sentence can mean totally different things depending on the way the words were said. Tones reveal intention, and if you say something in a kind, sweet and loving way, it will show your love. And vice versa. When I write posts I try to verbalize them in my mind in a nice way, but sometimes it does not cross the anonymity of the Internet.

I find that it is a good thing to try to be civil, kind and even-tempered with everyone, including those who share one’s views and those who do not. To love one person is to love every person, and the love we send out to one person might multiply onto many others. As we are social creatures, and as it is socially considered more “feminine” to be kind, sweet, nurturing and loving, the power of Voice lies with us.

It was not a sad dream. In the dream, I saw and felt glowing in the darkness. There were ghostly orange-ish and yellow-ish lights swirling around me, and they hugged me and made me feel warm and happy. I remember thinking that they weren’t normal ghosts.

One of the swirling light forms took on the appearance of a solid-looking flesh-and-blood small boy. He was clad in blueish clothing and had a look of youthful innocence. He came up to me, hugged me, and called me mommy. He told me that he was happy and doing fine, that this world was not a place for him, and that I shouldn’t be sad.

In the dream, I kept looking at him and hugging him in disbelief and wonder. I wanted to ask him more questions, but I had the feeling the message I was meant to take from the contact was one of happiness, warmth and loving contentment. I woke up with that same feeling.

Although this is, and will always be, a sad anniversary, I try to remember the spiritual teachings that I have learned, and remember that our purpose here is to learn to the beauty and truth of love and light, even in the face of seemingly unending darkness and pain.

I still love and miss our little boy, who would have turned one tomorrow.

So I can cautiously say that I am most likely pregnant! :)

Technically my period isn’t supposed to come until tomorrow. I started feeling cramps on Wednesday the 11th, which made me think I was getting my period early. But it still hasn’t come, and instead of the typical pre-menstrual symptoms, I’m increasing getting the feeling of fullness in my breasts. I’m also getting more heartburn and feeling more fatigued.

I am trying not to be overly optimistic. I could just be over-analyzing my body, and my period could still come in a day or two. Even if I am pregnant, the miscarriage rate is in the 20-30% range, and the risk doesn’t go down until well into the second trimester. And, of course, there’s the possibility of another stillbirth. I’m no longer innocently naive to all of the things that can go wrong.

But if I am pregnant, then it means that at least my body is working properly. We are getting a home pregnancy test tonight, and we hope for the best.

A lot of people who were born and raised upper middle class don’t really appreciate what they have because they’ve never known anything else. Even when they travel to remote places, they know they can get back to the comfort of civilization. They’ve never had to, for instance, live in 40 degree celsius heat (over 100 degrees F) without air conditioning while undergoing a drought. They’ve also probably never really faced death.

I grew up in China pre-development, and lived in what would be considered by American standards to be dire poverty. My mother and I also survived on very little when I was younger. My husband volunteered in a developing country in Africa, lived alone for over a year, lost like 60lbs and had to be hospitalized. Those early life experiences make us feel less inclined to go “discover ourselves in another country.” We’ve already sought out spirituality and gone through a lot of hardships. We also know there are people who have gone through way worse, and it gives us perspective.

These issues run quite deep, and I don’t think they can be solved by a mere return to “traditional values.” Without traditional conditions like brutal hardships, close-knit families and communities, constant threat of disease, starvation, and death, those values are merely lip service. We don’t really want to give up our modern conveniences and goods, throw out our microwaves, electronics and automobiles, or move out of large metropolitan centers back to small huts in villages. So what next?

The other day I listened to an NPR radio program about a guy who was a huge Apple fan, loved Apple products and bought the newest and latest gadget every time. Then one day he heard about some pictures taken by Chinese factory workers who put together these Apple products, and decided to see the factories in person. What he found was quite astonishing. There are people who work like slaves to produce our electronics. They work crazy hours and live in squalor.

Suppose that people boycott Foxconn, which is even reputed to be one of the better Chinese factories for working conditions, and stop buying electronics. Is this realistic? Can it even happen on a widescale basis? If it does, won’t that hamper China’s economic development, which is now tied to the world’s economy, fiat currency and economic models of constant growth? And who are we to say they can’t modernize just like the West has done? So on, and so on.

The situation is quite complicated, and there are no easy solutions. So we keep on doing what we have been doing until something derails these tracks. If you ask me, I think the real problem is not material poverty, but spiritual poverty.

The sky above glowed dark, a round black sun in the center of the world. I fell through a tunnel, and emerged at the other end of the black hole into a bright golden sun, the same size and shape, a mirror universe. It was somewhat like what people describe in near-death experiences, the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was the same world as I live in now, but a twin with its own rules. In this world I could only move through time. I could still see everything, the sun, the animals, the people, the objects, but I could not affect them. I could move forward and backward in time.

In my dream-state of figurative imagery, I saw a wooden bookshelf that should have held records, but the woman who stood next to me — perhaps my guide — told me that in this world, there were no books. She said that we can go to any time in history and see all that has transpired, thus no need for memories or records, for we can replay everything at will.

I followed her lead and tried to practice “movement” in this world, time-travel. It was unintuitive to me. When I changed time, the entire scene shifted away from the empty bookshelves. I remember standing beneath large trees, at a street corner, watching the traffic go by. I wondered to myself what time I was experiencing.

Near the end of the dream, an internal voice told me that in this world, we are to master time-travel, while in the normal world as I know it, we are to master space-travel. By doing so, when the two worlds meet, the masteries will lead to something great.

I woke this morning and felt like the dream had shown me something profound. This is what Ra said in the Law of One:

The process in space/time of the forgiveness and acceptance is much like that in time/space in that the qualities of the process are analogous. However, while in space/time it is not possible to determine the course of events beyond the incarnation but only to correct present imbalances. In time/space, upon the other hand, it is not possible to correct any unbalanced actions but rather to perceive the imbalances and thusly forgive the self for that which is.

The decisions then are made to set up the possibility/probabilities of correcting these imbalances in what you call future space/time experiences. The advantage of time/space is that of the fluidity of the grand overview. The advantage of space/time is that, working in darkness with a tiny candle, one may correct imbalances.

As I interpret these statements in light of my dream and what physics say about dimensionality, I am inclined to theorize that “space/time” refers to our present, living experience and reality, 3D space and 1D time, while “time/space” refers to a different, parallel reality, 3D time and 1D space. The numeration may not be exact, but for the moment I’ll leave this theory with those “archetypical” numbers, which when put together make 11 and 33.

It is interesting that according to Ra, in this reality, we are in “darkness.” There is a veil that is pulled over us, and we feel like Neo in the beginning of The Matrix, feeling like there is something more, but unable to pinpoint it because we remain trapped in the dream. I think, but I do not know for sure, that what lies beyond “space/time” and our limited cognition is not some barren wasteland of post-apocalyptic ruin, but rather the universe in which our souls rest.

In the “time/space” universe where time is laid out before us like a vast expanse, we can review what has transpired and have a “grand overview.” If this is the place where our souls go, then it is the learning ground for souls. Unincarnated souls in “time/space” cannot move freely through space, while incarnate souls in “space/time” cannot move freely through time, move back into the past or view the future.

The words “setting up future space/time experiences” refer to what we call “reincarnation.” As I had written previously, I feel like we are each here in this world to learn lessons. I feel that I am learning the things my soul had set out for me to learn in a lesson plan of sorts, because these messages resonate with me strongly.

In these metaphysical planes there is a great deal of what you call time which is used to review and re-review the biases and learn/teachings of a prior, as you would call it, space/time incarnation. The extreme fluidity of these regions makes it possible for much to be penetrated which must be absorbed before the process of healing of an entity may be accomplished. Each entity is located in a somewhat immobile state much as you are located in space/time in a somewhat immobile state in time. In this immobile space the entity has been placed by the form-maker and Higher Self so that it may be in the proper configuration for learn/teaching that which it has received is.

After the death of the physical complex in yellow-ray activation the mind/body/spirit complex moves to a far different portion of time/space in which the indigo body will allow much healing and review to take place before any movement is made towards another incarnative experience.

It is true that the nature of time/space is such that a lifetime may be seen whole as a book or record, the pages studied, riffled through, and re-read. However, the value of review is that of the testing as opposed to the studying. At the testing, when the test is true, the distillations of all study are made clear.

Perhaps the most critical difference of the veiling, before and after, was that before the mind, body, and spirit were veiled, entities were aware that each energy transfer and, indeed, very nearly all that proceeds from any intercourse, social or sexual, between two entities has its character and substance in time/space rather than space/time. The energies transferred during the sexual activity are not, properly speaking, of space/time. There is a great component of what you may call metaphysical energy transferred. Indeed, the body complex as a whole is greatly misunderstood due to the post-veiling assumption that the physical manifestation called the body is subject only to physical stimuli. This is emphatically not so.

I am sensitive to and aware of this transference of energies, and I have always been drawn to those who are similar in these aspects. My husband tells me, “When we seek, the veil thins, and we can see more of the light.” Last night, he did a deep meditation holding my hands as we fell asleep, which I feel like helped lead to my dreams.

Reading these passages evoke in me a feeling of profound sadness and joy at the same time. It makes me want to cry to think about the “home frequency,” a place that I could truly call home.