I came across an online transcript of an interview with Thomas Ashley-Farrand the other day, and whether the details were perfectly literal or wandering a little in the direction of myth, it had that particular shimmer of truth that stays with you. He described something rather beautiful, almost cheeky, really, that even the gods, the luminous beings who glide about the higher realms with enviable grace, would willingly choose to incarnate on Earth if they needed to clear karma. Not because they enjoy earthly turbulence, but because this is the only realm dense enough to offer proper spiritual traction.

He used a metaphor that immediately lodged itself in my imagination. Picture a small wooden boat suspended in mid-air. You sit inside it, oars in hand, cheerfully motivated and perhaps even feeling rather holy. You begin to row. The oars sweep through air in majestic arcs. You might even congratulate yourself on the technique. But the boat doesn’t move. Not even an inch. The air is too light, too subtle to offer resistance. You can row until the stars change position, but you won’t get anywhere.

According to Ashley-Farrand, that’s what it’s like for beings in the higher realms. Stunning landscapes, immaculate vibes, endless stillness - but no density. No resistance. No traction. Which means no karmic momentum. Without friction, even good intentions cannot change anything.

Now place the same boat on water.

Suddenly, every stroke counts. The moment the oar sinks into the resistance of the water, you move. You’re working harder, yes, but the work has effect. The density becomes your ally. And this, he suggested, is what incarnation on Earth really is. 

We are rowing in water. Thick, emotional, bewildering water. And that density is precisely what gives us power.

I found that revelation quietly exhilarating. It reframes the human experience from a cosmic demotion to a kind of spiritual postgraduate programme. Earth is not the penalty box; it’s the workshop. It’s the realm where things actually shift because everything here has weight. Thoughts, feelings, choices, grudges, forgiveness — all of it accumulates and all of it can be cleared.

This is where mantra enters like a finely crafted oar. In Ashley-Farrand’s teaching, mantra is not symbolic or sentimental; it is vibrational technology. Sanskrit syllables act on the subtle body like tuning forks striking the places where old karmic residue has settled. And in this dense realm, those vibrations travel. They stir the sediment. They reorder the field. They dissolve what cannot move in lighter planes.

Mantra, in other words, is designed for water.

Forgiveness functions much the same way. Jesus didn’t teach forgiveness simply to encourage moral tidiness. He taught forgiveness as a profound clearing mechanism, a release of the energetic density that binds the heart and knots the mind. Every act of forgiveness loosens a karmic thread; every refusal to forgive tightens one.

And then there is ho’oponopono, the Hawaiian art of cleansing the field through the simplest sequence of phrases. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” It is mantra’s cousin from another lineage, a devotional clearing practice that treats life as a constant opportunity to restore harmony. The teaching is the same: everything unresolved in you is calling to be cleaned.

Different paths, same principle.
Different cosmologies, same physics.
It is the density that makes it possible.

And this is the quietly astonishing part. The heavenly realms might sparkle with serenity, but the true engines of transformation: forgiveness, mantra, clearing, are most potent down here, in the thick of things. Which means we are not simply surviving Earth. We could be using it. We are rowing. When we use mantra, we are generating movement through a medium designed for change.

Perhaps that is why the interview, true or embellished, felt so right. It honoured what so many of us intuit but forget: there is something profoundly noble about being human. We are rowing in the one realm where the oars bite. Where every effort has consequence. Where forgiveness alters futures. Where a mantra chanted sincerely can ripple through lifetimes.

I suggest a perception upgrade and reframing for human suffering. We are not stuck in density; we are blessed by it. We are in the realm where the gods themselves would come to do their deepest clearing. And here we are, oars in hand, with the chance to move further in a single lifetime than light beings in subtler realms could manage in centuries.

Quite a school indeed.