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What a year it has been. Reflecting on everything that has happened really makes me think about the busy lives we all live.

This year started off with lots of snow and lots of work. Many of the soldiers in my shop prepared for a tour in Afghanistan, so we were swamped with work with so many people off the floor on training.

Multiple exercises and the floods in Manitoba took many soldiers away from home for over nine months straight, and with all that man power gone, well, the mass amounts of broken vehicles coming from exercises and the operations had us working over time.

But eventually things calmed down. Then I got married in the summer to a wonderful woman. The wedding was wonderful. Many friends and family showed up. We got so many gifts we had to move into a bigger apartment. I would like to put out a thanks right now to everyone who supported us at the wedding and helped us get started with our life.

Shortly before the wedding, at the bachelor party, we were paint balling and I went for a slide and caught a stick, bending my ankle under me. This resulted in a broken ankle. I really didn’t want to wear my big moon boot – given to me by the doctors – while walking down the isle, so I wrapped my ankle up real tight and stuffed my swollen ankle into my parade boots. Everyone was surprised I was walking as well as I did. I did limp a lot and by the end of the night by ankle had swollen up a lot more.

After our nice wedding and reception, we settled down into our new home in September. In October I left for CFB Cold Lake. There I received OJT training on Aircraft Maintenance Support Equipment (AMSE). I also got to work out in a shop by the bombing range. We were told we could not do P.T outside due to bears.

A Buddy of mine went hunting and got his first buck. The Antlers were scored at 405 points. Apparently the record is 415! Not bad for his first deer. We were quite impressed. He gave me a few pounds of meat. He got about 80lbs of his buck. I have skinned a few dear now, and I know the average is about 30lbs to 40lbs of meat. Nice job!

Up in Cold Lake, my buddies and I also experienced a very sad time. As we came back to base from the weekend – me driving home on the weekends to see the wife our buddy “Z” pulled us into his room. I first saw a bunch of crime scene tape on “HB’s” door. I assumed he was going to talk to us about a bunch of shit the boys got into. But the news was far worse. On November 13th, 2011, HB passed away, resulting from suicide.

We all took it pretty hard. The worst part, trying to understand why. Nobody really will know why, we only can come up with our own theories to make sense of it. The next couple of weeks were tough. I staff really helped us get through it though. We had a really nice memorial service for him, and a bunch of guys were sent to Ontario to be Pallbearers.

The beginning of December saw us back in Edmonton. We are now getting ready for the Christmas Holidays where we will have 3 weeks off. We had our Soldiers Dinner on the 8th, and were lucky enough to get the following Friday off, leading in this weekend. Now I have one more week at work, then I get the next 3 weeks off.

I hope you all had a good year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I remember growing up Grandpa Kisch has been in my life for most of it. He married my Grandma around the time I was four if I remember correctly. One of the most prominent memories of Grandpa Kisch is his dogs. He always has had a small long haired dog as long as I have known him. I can’t remember the first dog, but I remember their second one Kelly.

I remember riding my bike on our first farm. I had training wheels on it, because I don’t think I actually learned to ride a two wheeled bike until my cousin Lloyed showed me in Taylor, B.C. But I was riding my training bike up and down our drive way and Grandpa Kisch was out there with me watching me. His little dog ran in front of me and I ran right over it. I was so scared Grandpa would be mad, but he wasn’t. He checked out his dog and made sure she was alright, and told me to get back on the bike and keep practicing.

I remember on our second farm when I was older Grandma and Grandpa came to visit. I can’t remember one time when Grandpa Kisch ever didn’t complain about Fort. St. John Mud. “It’s always muddy, always, this black disgusting mud is always here when I come to visit.” He said that all the time.

I remember he always corrected my speech. I would always say “Grandpa do you know.”
He would say, “If I knew you wouldn’t be telling me. Stop saying ‘Do you know?’.”

Grandpa loved wood working. He built each of us kids a memory chest. I have it to this day and it is stuffed full of things I would like to take out one day when I’m older and look at. He had a very fancy wood working shop in Ferintosh, Ab where he spent lots of time building beautiful pieces of wood work.

Grandpa also loved his flowers. I remember pulling up to their Bed and Breakfast in Ferintosh and the drive way had flowers all along it and down the middle. He had a beautiful stone fountain they built. He really loved creating things of beauty. He even helped us build our rock fountain at our second farm in Fort St. John.

One funny memory I remember is Grandpa loved his bird feeders. He would sit out on a bench and watch the birds and would often fall asleep. I was out tossing pine cones into the air and trying to catch them. One of the pine cones I missed and it fell on Grandpa’s bald head. It startled him so much he got up yelling and swinging his arms around. I was so scared and tried to hide behind a tree, but Grandpa came over and said “Was that you Cuyler?”
I said, “It was an accident Grandpa.”
“Be more careful next time, and stop tossing the pine cones in the air, your scaring the birds.” Then he brought me to sit on the bench with him and he started telling me what type of birds there were in the feeders. Then he scared off a squirrel which he said made him mad because they ate all the bird feed and scared off the birds.

Grandpa was a loving man who loved beautiful things. He made great Chili which to this day I still think is the best Chili in the world. I will miss him but I’m not sad about his death. I know he had a great fulfilling life and accomplished much. I’m glad he came into my life when I was a young boy.

I love you Grandpa. I’ll miss you. Rest In Peace old friend.

I’ve recently been trying to figure out for myself if I believe in the christian afterlife, or in an afterlife of some religious belief. I like any other person out there, will ponder the chances of going to hell or heaven, if such places actually exist.

I believe I have a soul. It makes sense to me that myself, what I see as myself, my mind, is not just a bunch of blood floating in the brain, but actually another scientifically explainable intelligence using the body as it’s ride, or tool. If it’s not scientifically explainable now, I believe it will be in the future. I have my own theories on it, but that is a whole other article.

So my main concern belongs to the idea that a near death experience (NDE) may be proof of an afterlife. I know people of my old religion of Mormonism that claim to have scene the different levels of heaven, and talked to Jesus. Mormons believe in different levels of heaven by the way. But this also brings up another concern.

If Mormons see the different levels of heaven, or have Jesus explain that they are in one level, of the three levels, and the afterlife they see is what Mormons teach, then why is it that members of other more mainstream christian groups don’t see that version of heaven. They see heaven and hell, like it is black and white. Or members of non christian groups like Hinduism see their own version of the afterlife.

Now I have no documentation, nothing to prove what I’m saying is true. I just read a bunch of stuff on the internet. Of course more then one source. Many sources. There seems to be a pattern though. People that have followed a belief system, or where brought up around a belief system, even if it is not their own, seem to have NDEs that relate to those upbringings.

I read some NDEs of Atheists. They had NDEs that involved Jesus, and hell, and heaven. So you would say then that proves God exists. Well think about it this way. Many Atheists grow up in christian communities and are surrounded by Christians. They may not believe in God, but their mind runs free just like others in a NDE experience and they can see multiple things, many similar to christian NDEs.

But at the same time, not all NDEs are about an afterlife. There are many accounts of seeing a story replay, or parts of the NDE experiencer’s life replay. Even Christians don’t all just see a black and white heaven and hell, with jesus, or angels. I read an account where one Christian saw Jesus, but it was an half Jesus half Centaur.

I am a big believer in the mind. The mind is extremely powerful. I also believe that our souls will move on after death, but I am not believing in the religious version of an afterlife. I believe my intelligence will move on and embody something else. An evolutionary process of knowledge. Something tangible, just not yet by our technology. An energy source untrappable.

And when I die, my intelligence will be free of my current body, will join whatever pool or intelligent source to be used in something else. So in essence, I will probably never recognize myself as myself after I die. I’ll be gone, but part of something bigger. And I’ll know I’m something bigger, knowing that I had at once given intelligence to become Cuyler Callahan, an Earth Human, and now taking the intelligence which grew, and adding it to the collection. Almost like farming intelligence I suppose. An evolutionary process. Something natural, and mappable with the proper technology.

I believe that NDEs are the result of the human mind in a dieing state, some which take longer to die then others. They may even read dead, but have such a low amount of life left in them, that it’s not readable by our equipment today. And our brain has grown up in a society where an afterlife is taught to exist, or the subject is around us all the time, especially if your non christian and have to deal with Christians and explain your beliefs to them.

So the brain believes, even if you never believed in an afterlife, that the soul is going to an afterlife, and in the dead state, or almost dead state, it plays out a scenario which is close to the beliefs, or beliefs it has been subjected to by others. It is something programmed to happen. That is why Hindu’s see their afterlife and God, Muslim’s their afterlife, Christians Jesus, or angels, heaven and hell, Mormons their version of heaven, hell or outer darkness as its more commonly called.

It’s a Neurological program that has subconsciously told itself what is going to happen, so when your in the clinically dead state, the mind starts the process. Also, when you clinically die, many different hormones and chemicals get released into the brain. These are also many of the same chemicals that cause hallucinations. These hallucinogens will easily help the brain launch its pre programmed afterlife and making the NDE seem way more real and convincing.

I also read in many cases, that a lot of NDEs are not even related to an afterlife. Lots of times people have said to have lived in the story of a book they read, or a movie they saw. Or their favorite lifetime fictional character came to life and talked with them. So really, that is just one more point proving NDEs aren’t really the soul going to heaven or hell.

So my conclusion. NDEs are a result of social and religious conditioning. I believe in an afterlife, but nothing even close to what we will experience individually. Maybe our soul will be able to walk around and have it’s own identity for a while, but I think eventually, without a body as a vessel, it will slowly be absorbed by the collective intelligence. Live life well, and have fun while your here.

I used to never really think about death much. When I was a Mormon, I had a plan all laid out for me. After I left the Mormon Religion, I thought about death a bit, then came up with what I think happens after death. But I’m not sure what happens, I’m not totally positive. I do know you don’t just poof don’t exist.

A human soul is physical, just like the body your in. What makes up our personality, our thoughts, our emotions, that stuff has been measured on instruments by scientists, it has been calculated and proven to exist in some form. A tangible form that we can touch maybe not so much, but enough so that we know there is a physical form of some sort.
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Three fine men, friends of mine, and soldiers, passed away in the last couple weeks. My friends, and I, just finished doing our part at Private Bryce Simpson’s funeral Friday, January, 8th, 2010 in Whitby Ontario. Also on friday, my buddy Corporal Zachery McCormack was laid to rest at his own funeral in Sherwood Park, Alberta. The following day of Saturday, January 9th, 2010, a friend of mine, and a mentor who taught me during Basic Military Qualification, and Soldier Qualification Sergeant George Miok was also laid to rest in Sherwood Park, Alberta.
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