I first came to western North Dakota in 2011 because of its Oil Boom. Back then a person could arrive here and find employment within an hour, at a pay rate that was higher than anywhere else in the U.S., with 10-40 additional hours of overtime each week. But working conditions and living conditions were hard. Housing in North Dakota became more expensive and scarce than San Francisco or New York City. The weather was extremely cold, there was little to do for recreation or entertainment, the people were unfriendly, there was a shortage of women, and the women here were unattractive.

I never planned on staying in North Dakota. I just wanted to keep my home in a different state, pay off all of my bills, save up a surplus of money, and return to my home. As each year came and went, I had not saved up enough money to return home, and employment back home continued to pay half of what I was making in North Dakota. I was stuck, creeping ahead slowly maybe, just for the fact that I was continuing to pay all of my bills.

For me, North Dakota was very much like being in prison. There was very little to do in western North Dakota to begin with, there isn’t much here. Western North Dakota is very sparsely populated, the entire state has less than 800,000 people. The few things that a worker from out-of-state can do here, go to a grocery store, convenience store, a bar, restaurant, gym, the local people are unfriendly, and the out-of-state workers are usually very rough in every way, uneducated, drug-users, extensive criminal background. Like I said, for me, North Dakota was like being in prison.

I have written articles previously, where I went so far as to show the criminal-record print-outs for several of my former North Dakota work supervisors, which included assaults, robberies, drug possession, kidnapping, and first-degree murder. I came up with a saying, “In North Dakota, employers would rather a person did four years in prison versus four years in college.” There is an expression, “People like people, who are like themselves.” North Dakotans are more comfortable with rough, uneducated, primitive acting people, who function at a rudimentary level.

As a result of the roughness, alcohol-use, drug-use, and criminal history of the Oil Boom transients that came to North Dakota, the Police here became hyper-aggressive in stopping people for questioning. Prior to coming to North Dakota, where I had previously lived in six other states from my teens into my forties, I averaged about one stop by the Police every four years. Living in North Dakota, I experienced getting stopped by the Police five times EACH YEAR, because of their “fishing expeditions” to try to find a reason to arrest me like they did for all of the other criminals. So again, living in North Dakota was like being in prison for me.

With very little to do for recreation to begin with, the prospect of unattractive & unfriendly women, rough uneducated criminal workers from out-of-state, hyper-aggressive Police, after a couple of years living in North Dakota, I decided to stay home mostly, in my prison cell. For something to do, I began this WordPress Blog of mine, writing about my thoughts, observations, and experiences in North Dakota. Eventually I also began writing about many other things.

This WordPress Blog helped me to formulate, organize, elaborate, and understand my own thoughts, observations, and experiences better, because I was trying to explain them clearly enough so that they made sense to other people. This process often caused me to realize and understand more than I would have, if I hadn’t been trying to write about it. This writing was therapeutic and useful to me in clarifying my own thoughts, examining things more thoroughly, and being able to see deeper into subjects than I otherwise would have.

Living in North Dakota, where there is very little to do, having to stay home in my prison cell, I began to have more time to do nothing but THINK, than I had ever had before. In a way, I began to withdraw from the World, not because I intended to, but because there was no where to go, nothing to do, very few people to talk to, and very few people worth talking to. This period of my life in my late forties, 2015-2022, became a period of involuntary Introspection.

I HATE this quotation from President Theodore Roosevelt, who lived not far from me in western North Dakota back in the 1890s, “If it weren’t for my time in North Dakota, I never would have been President.”

North Dakotans love this quote, as if North Dakota inspires greatness.  To the contrary, I understand EXACTLY what Theodore Roosevelt meant: This place is so bleak & barren with nothing to do, you’ve got nothing but Introspection whether you wanted it or not, like being alone in a prison cell for years on end.

Thinking, thinking, thinking, nothing but thinking for the past 7-8 years, one of the things that I began to dwell on was the inescapable reality that Christianity was not adequately explaining life and existence.  All of the major World religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, they are each contradictory to each other, so they can’t possibly all be correct.

Further, taking Christianity for example, Christianity is even contradictory within itself.  In the Book Of Genesis, there are two completely different creation stories, one where God created male & female together at the same time, and then a different creation story where Adam was created first and then later Eve was created.  Instances in the Bible where people are dead in the ground waiting for the Resurrection, and instances in the Bible where people have already gone to Heaven or Hell after their death.

What am I supposed to believe regarding the Bible?  Is it infallible?  Is it a true recollection of historical events?  If the Book Of Revelation is so important, why is it written so confusingly that ordinary people can’t decipher it, and even Biblical scholars can’t come to a consensus on what it means?  Why was the Bible written in such a way that makes it difficult for even educated people to understand?

Regarding belief and faith in the Bible and Christianity, being alive and witnessing terrible tragedies happening to good people, while prosperity is enjoyed by wicked people, how can a person reconcile this unfairness in life?  It makes a person question their belief that there is a God that watches over everything as described in the Bible.

Creating more doubt in Christianity, are some of its best-known Christian Ministers such as Joel Osteen in Houston and Kenneth Copeland in Fort Worth who live in palatial mansions, own expensive cars and planes, and have a personal net-worth of $50M and $200M.  The most important teachings of Christianity are the lessons from the life of Jesus, who showed by example how apostles should not seek wealth or comfort, and continuously seek to help the poor and those in need.  But these famous Ministers of Christianity now are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus taught, seeking money and luxury, hoarding their wealth instead of spending it on the poor and needy.

There is so much to think about and ponder, considering the divide between what we are taught versus what we observe happening in life.  There is so much that is wrong in the World, so much suffering, so many tragedies, corruption, it causes a person to question whether there really is an omnipotent God that is watching over everything.  What is the purpose of God allowing bad things to happen to good people?  If the Bible was meant to serve as an instruction manual for people to live by, why is it so confusing, indirect, meandering, instead of straightforward and easy to understand?

Throughout history, what often appears to be happening in the World, is leaders try to convince people what the rules are, get everyone to agree to follow these rules, then the leaders proceed to manipulate, control, take advantage of, fleece, and enslave the people through their observance and obedience to these rules.  Has the adaptation of Christianity by Western Civilization occurred because emperors, kings & queens, presidents, and prime ministers found it to be useful in controlling people?

How does religion begin in any culture?  Did primitive hunters & gatherers discuss among themselves the meaning of life, death, lightning, floods, drought, and eventually the most popular explanations became their religion or mythology?  In many cultures this appears to be the case.

When written language was created, the religion and mythology of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Jews became more intricate, detailed, and complex.  I wonder for each of these religions, how much doctrine was received through the prophets of God, and how much was created out of thin-air by men who had an agenda of control and manipulation?

I tried to find a beginning point to start from.  We don’t really know who created us, why they created us, what are we supposed to be doing, what is going to happen to us, is there life after death.  It could have been a Creator who created us, maybe a group of Creators, maybe even a whole race of Creators.  But were we created for entertainment, as a scientific experiment, as livestock, or for some other reason, we just don’t know. 

It would have been helpful if there had been a clear, thorough, written explanation left for us on a rock wall, metal plates, stone tablets, clay tablets, or papyrus for us to know who created us, why, what are we supposed to be doing, and what is going to happen to us.  Perhaps there was, but it was accidently or intentionally destroyed, or hidden from us.

In 2018, I was watching YouTube videos on the internet, when I began seeing a few Dolores Cannon videos being recommended to me.  Dolores was a plump, older woman in her 70s, so I wasn’t very interested in her based on her appearance.  A few of her YouTube videos had titles relating to Reincarnation, so I eventually watched one of them.  Thank God Dolores was such a calming and pleasant person to listen to, so that I was willing to watch one of her speaking engagements in its entirety.

I wasn’t shocked by Dolores Cannon’s material when I first began listening to her, but I was thinking that it was too good to be true.  What she was saying explained a lot.  I was also very fortunate that the first several YouTube videos of Dolores Cannon that I watched were two-hour lectures where she started from the beginning of her work and proceeded to describe each of her discoveries as they happened, otherwise her material would have been too confusing for me.

Here is just a brief explanation for now.  In the late 1960s Dolores Cannon and her husband were experimenting with hypnosis because it was gaining popularity at that time as a way to help people reduce stress & anxiety, and to help people lose weight and quit smoking.  A medical doctor asked Dolores and her husband if they could help a young housewife who was struggling with anxiety and being overweight.  When Dolores and her husband hypnotized this young housewife, she began talking about what appeared to be other lifetimes that she had had.

Dolores Cannon and her husband had never experienced or heard about anything like this.  They continued to hypnotize this young housewife in the following weeks, tape recording each of these sessions, where she recalled the details of five different lifetimes that she had previously lived.  Dolores did as much research as she could, to determine the accuracy and validity of what this young woman was saying under hypnosis.

Unfortunately, Dolores’s husband was involved in a near-fatal car accident, required constant medical care for at least one year, then years of rehabilitation, so Dolores’ hypnosis research was put on hold for about eight years.

Speeding up this story for now, when Dolores was in her late forties, she was able to spend the next forty years conducting past-life regression research.  Not only was she able to record thousands of individuals’ past-life recollections under hypnosis, but she was able to get these people to describe their experiences during their time BETWEEN LIVES.  These times BETWEEN LIVES, provided a great deal of information about a Creator, Spirit Guides, Life-Review, future Life-Planning, the Purpose of Life, Souls, and many other things.

At times, I was beginning to doubt Dolores Cannon, such as when she talked about her book titled, “Jesus And The Essenes”, because I felt that she was going too far.  And also when she talked about her book titled something like, “Conversations With Nostradamus”.  But in time, as I listened to Dolores Cannon talk about these two books, there was a great deal of useful information, that had a likelihood of being true.

I had to write this Preface to Dolores Cannon, to establish a basis for how I came to believe that her explanations are probably the most thorough and complete explanations that we have at this time explaining our lives.  I estimate that 90% of people will have no interest whatsoever in listening to anything that I have to say about Dolores Cannon, or even listening to Dolores Cannon herself.  I believe that this is something that a person has to be ready to hear, or it won’t matter to them.

I hope to be able to begin a thorough introduction to Dolores Cannon in the near future.