The Afterlife in the Between

The Afterlife – Life Goes On

Dying was not pleasant – a disease ravaged my relatively young body of 42 years. My habits aided my demise. From the earliest memories, life felt like a mountain to climb with predators stalking every step of the way, just waiting for you to trip. It felt good to escape.

In my last days, I roamed my garden of overgrown regrets that I had no time left to tame. I left behind few flowers and a lot of aggressive weeds.

We imagine ourselves to be both better and worse than we really are, depending on the moment, but rarely have an accurate perception of our true self.

I was never Mother of the Year. My eldest daughter was authoritarian and controlling like her father. She hammered her own family with years of savage, unprovoked bursts of anger. The freedom-loving middle lass was too much like me, addled with my own insecurities and vices, dying at the same age as I did of the same disease. The youngest was wild from birth, though he settled quite nicely into life with a wonderful woman, becoming a great Father, despite my failings.

I failed to leave much of a legacy behind. I was busy figuring out where I fit in, a perpetually uncomfortable child trying to find my way in the world. A drink, a smoke, and some live music definitely helped, but only for the moment.

I confused freedom and independence with strength; that is the closest many of us ever get to feeling strong. Freedom is the horse running through the prairie, mane flowing, hooves rebelliously beating against the wild-flowered ground that threatens to swallow us all. Strength is the ground itself – patient, still, quiet, supporting all that stands.

Earth is so raw and biting, like walking around the planet wearing denim while stuck coatless in a cold whipping rain; it is wearing and unforgiving, sometimes for decades, nonstop.

For those of us who did not live easy, the expectation that nothing good will ever happen sits deep in our breast. There is a sense everything is doomed before it manifests. More times than not, when I became aware of my own breath, I realized I was not breathing at all, no longer taking life into my body. I was frozen as if being hunted. Fear, even in the best of times, subconsciously plagued my every moment.

It is not until we are on the other side that we understand that we signed up to learn most of these lessons and pay debts – much of it was created by our own design.

What’s left in the end is acceptance; whether dying takes a moment or a year, there is a letting go of all the plans and hopes, small and big, that we had. I wanted to know my grandchildren. I wanted to live. At the time of my death, I had a card in my wallet for a dentist appointment that I am sure no one canceled at 1:45 on June 13^th – a symbol how we hope and expect life to go on.

Then, it’s over, and there is light – a light that is very much alive and present. I laughed and wept in wild relief. It was a comfort I wasn’t certain I even deserved. It’s the same light that is everywhere; I don’t know how I was so blind to it when I was on Earth. If I only knew then…

I was so relieved that I did not cease to exist, more relieved that I did not go to hell as my unwaveringly religious mother repeatedly told me was my fate.

So real was my spirit body that touch was a sense that I took with me, though nothing felt the same. Nothing feels hard or sharp.

We try our best on the other side to take in deeply the most important lesson that we are never alone and always connected to the light of love, but upon reincarnation, all of our memories are almost always wiped, though some wash up on the shores of our conscious mind. Some young children kept those memories, only to have them fade with the years.

In death, you are your best self. You are back home, assessing your past life and comparing it to your others. Basically, you get your grades and begin to put together a plan for your next assignment.

Emotions are left on the doorstep of Earth, to be picked back up in your next incarnation. When you are born again, it feels like death in reverse. Leaving such peace to go back is not always pleasant, and some people are more resistant than others.

That elusive abstract oneness and connectedness people speak of that seems like a fantasy – it is the reality here, and it becomes clear that it is the reality everywhere when we truly open our eyes.

Unfortunately, we can’t stay in the Beyond forever. We are sometimes allowed to procrastinate for a spell, but we have to go back to Earth. We must keep learning and striving until we can access our highest selves with every breath, wherever and whoever we are in that moment.

Blanche Pelletier, TCI Correspondent from the Between
~ You Never Have to Let Go of Style ~