The only way we can really know what matters is to face living with the possibility of the loss of that very thing—moment to moment. That is what sweeps away pretense, falseness, what doesn’t matter. As well, it so quickly makes abundantly clear what does matter—love, telling someone how you really feel, being in the moment, seeing everything as though it is the last time you will see it this way. In times like these, even if one wishes, one cannot be mentally lazy or emotionally careless because one realizes the preciousness and the transience of life.
In our culture, people avoid facing death at all costs for as long as they can. Yet there is so much great value to be experienced in facing death, facing loss, facing the emotional void of not having the physical presence of someone who is so important to us. It would dramatically change how we live our life. Not necessarily in what we would accomplish, but in how we would react to what we would accomplish. There is no faster way to learn how to stay keenly in the now.
When experiencing loss of any magnitude, one goes through a stage of raw emotion; the roller coaster of composure and insanity. This is because the energy body is rearranging itself around a new configuration. When we have been one energy pattern for so long, it is quite uncomfortable to experience being suddenly shifted into a new pattern that, at least initially, is incomprehensible, inconceivable, unbearable.
Q: Is this why some people feel like they’re in a haze and not really sure of what they feel?
Yes, it’s a coping mechanism. When in doubt, humans are inclined to find a placeholder and stand on it.
Q: Is there a more productive way to be?
Yes, of course. Let yourself fall apart. Let yourself feel what you really feel. This is what is most productive for your spiritual, mental, and emotional health. In the short term, it would appear quite messy to others, but let that be their problem. It is important to let yourself fully experience the experience.
Inevitably, the death of a loved one sets one’s life up to shatter quite easily. But all that would shatter is what you no longer need anyway, so throw the rock. All that can break is what is not real, what doesn’t matter, what is a waste of energy. The shattering reveals who you really are. It can be painful but this is a very good thing. Initially one experiences the loss as unspeakable, but eventually, we come to learn that there is a different kind of connection that comes out of all this that will allow us to stay in touch.
You will continue to feel the actual presence of a deceased loved one for quite some time, and may not know what to do with that because you’re misinterpreting it as a memory of him/her, which makes you sad. Yet if you knew to accept this experience of their presence as real, you would feel loved and not alone. Death does not separate. Indeed, it fully joins together. But because people are separated from their sensing selves, from their own emotional clarity, they misinterpret this positive experience and turn it into something negative through ignorance.
Q: So, many of the thoughts we have about a deceased loved one are not so much because we are missing them, but because we are feeling their presence?
You are missing them. But you are also feeling their presence and misinterpreting that as the memory of the deceased. Say that it’s your father who has died. You’ll be sitting there and suddenly a thought of your father will be triggered and you will say, “Oh, that’s a memory of when he said this or did that.” And you will believe that’s where the experience is happening or originating. When actually the experience is happening on a sensory intuitive level. Because the mind doesn’t know how to interpret that, it filters it through memory and says, “Oh, this is why I’m thinking of my father right now.”
Q: Are you saying that I’d be thinking about my father because he is actually present?
True. When you feel the spiritual presence of your loved ones, it has the effect of making you feel sort of itchy all over because you’re not accustomed to this kind of contact. When the mind looks for an answer, the only reasonable one it can come up with is that something triggered a memory.
Q: Does that mean then that my father is trying to contact me at different times? Or he’s in my presence at different times in a way stronger than other times?
Yes.
Q: In those moments is he trying to communicate anything with me, or more simply and directly let me know that he is present?
Sometimes both. Sometimes one or the other. Mostly the dead have a need to reach out to their loved ones because the loved one’s sadness finds them and draws the dead back to comfort and reassure that there is no separation. They are not gone, they are just in a form that you don’t understand and can’t see without training. So there is a strong need on the dead person’s part to connect powerfully to help the grieving overcome their sadness. Unfortunately, because most people are so clogged up, when the dead do this, it can actually cause more grief.
Q: What happens to us after we die?
There is a dispersion of energy upon the release of death. What’s confusing for people is that there’s a tendency to believe that the dead go somewhere else—to heaven, to hell, up in the air, etc. And they don’t go anywhere else. They are all still here. We breathe them in and out with every breath we take. God-consciousness is here. Life and death are here; not some faraway place, not up in the stars, but right here. There is so much misunderstanding around death and what it means to be in the present, and why certain cultures have revered their ancestors. But quite simply, what happens when we die is we change from physical form to pure spiritual God connection. And that happens right here.
Q: Does that person, when he or she dies, stay as that person?
For a period of time, the consciousness remains intact as a particular identity. But fairly soon it becomes part of the All That Is. This is where God-consciousness also becomes very literal in the All That Is. All that is living, all that has passed on, is all that is, is God-consciousness.
It’s like taking a drop of water, which is two hydrogen molecules, and an oxygen molecule, and placing it into a body of water the size of infinity. It is still two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule now amid infinite numbers of other hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Now which one is the drop that got put in the water? Can you ever take out the exact same drop of water? The answer is no, because when you drop it back into the infinite, it immediately blends back into all that is. It retains its identity, meaning hydrogen and oxygen, but it now realizes that’s all there is. Is this making sense to you?
Q: Yes, but we think of ourselves as coming back again and again, which may or may not be what exactly happens.
We do come back.
Q: But are we us?
Not in the way that you imagine. We are a collective: soul clusters in one body, soul clusters in many bodies. Though you like the proprietary feeling of “Me, myself, and I,” that is a total illusion.
When you go back to review past lives, you are all the yous you’ve been. But all those yous have entailed direct connections to millions and millions of other yous. This is why you can know anything you want to know collectively because you are the collective. On one level, you are connected to this state where you are literally aware of everyone who has ever lived and will ever live. This is because in that great collective consciousness it is all known as one, as a whole—not as the individual hydrogen/oxygen molecules. It does not make a distinction within itself that I am So and So in this life, and I was Joe Schmoe in the last life, and I’m going to be Tinkerbell in the next life. That only exists in the linear type reality in which we live.
Q: So there’s really no special connection between…. if I feel as if I’m communicating with my father….
Yes, there is. Your father still exists in the collective whole. You can speak to him as an individual, but when you speak to him as the individual you’re also speaking to the All That Is. This is what I tried to explain to you when you asked about asking for the help of a deceased person versus the universe. The deceased person is the universe. When you single out that tiny element of the universal energy, you are also drawing upon other qualities of that, such as memory of the collective consciousness of that individual. But your father, your husband, your mother, and so on, are all pure God now; what you would call God-consciousness. But yes, absolutely, you can speak to them individually. You can feel their presence individually.
The power of the All That Is and all of the particular details of how it works is beyond mental and emotional comprehension. But you need to know that it does work, that you’re not making up these encounters. They are real. Of course, you maintain connections to all who have passed on, as well as all of those who will come. But, presently, that’s beyond the scope of most people’s understanding.
Suffice it to say that you never lose the connection to your loved ones through death. That is not possible. You can lose it through ignorance, selfishness, anger, and other human emotions. But you can’t lose the connection through death. If anything, it sharpens and clarifies. It helps the connection because all of the distractions are removed and all that’s left is the pure connection to pure communication. So next time a departed loved one comes into your mind, take comfort that they are really there with and for you.