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A handbook on how to stay in touch with our loved ones once they have crossed over to the Afterlife might seem a bold proposition, especially in an era when we are seeing growing numbers of certified mediums. The increase in qualifications through specialist theory and practical courses would seem to mark a net distinction between ‘ordinary’ people seeking the mediation of a professional and those who have not only received the ‘gift’ but have also studied to hone their skills. However, things are not quite like that.
This book does not invite you to become a professional medium—although the idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem, provided one has a genuine passion for and is patiently and devotedly committed to the discipline, as well as having access to professional training centres.
Instead, the purpose of this book is to bring awareness of the tools that are available to all human beings, to enable us to stay in touch with our loved ones, once they have crossed over to the Afterlife.
As I will often say in this book, we are all—the so-called ‘living’ and the so-called ‘dead’, as well as animals, plants, our homes and our planet—essentially made of spirit. Spirit is the ‘raw material’ from which we are made. Thanks to spirit, we are never truly separate from each other or our environment and surroundings.
The only reason it may seem a challenge to tune into the spiritual dimension of existence, whether it be to communicate with the physically living or with the so-called ‘dead’, is that we are conditioned from an early age to believe we are separate from one another. We are taught the pronouns I and you, e.g. ‘I am a child and you are my mother.’ This linguistic distinction carries the implication that, although we may be surrounded by those who love us, we are ultimately alone.
As we grow, we then take on further roles, or labels, and commit ourselves to fulfilling the expectations that come with those roles. For instance, a teacher must invest great energy into maintaining discipline and assessing student performance; while children are expected to behave and perform to a certain standard, and may even be labelled as suffering from an attention deficit disorder if mainstream education methods fail to make them feel involved in classroom activities. Another example is the working mother, who is expected to be professional during the day and a loving supportive mother (and, perhaps, wife!) when she comes home.
Juggling all these roles can make us feel exhausted and inadequate by the end of the day. This spiritual depletion stems from the false identification with our bodies, which makes it difficult to conceive that there might be something ‘beyond’ this physical plane. The roles we play are reinforced by our culture, our interpersonal relationships, our daily commitments, our state of health, the media and so on. We are under the spell of what I have come to see as a form of mass hypnosis; we tend to take these roles for granted, and dutifully play our parts day in, day out…until something apparently irreparable happens. A loved one is swallowed up by a mysterious black hole called death.
Suddenly, we no longer see them, we do not hear from them, they do not call us, they no longer talk or write to us. Their personal effects are here; their clothes are still in the wardrobe; their home, furniture and knick-knacks are still in their place; their car is in the garage; their phone is on the bedside table; even their Facebook page—if they have one—is still online; but that dear loved person is suddenly no longer here.
We are here and they are there. We are busy, often swamped under the weight of our daily tasks, and they are immersed in eternal rest. We are preoccupied with a multitude of stressful obligations and they are absent, closed in a tomb or in our photo albums…
The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand by Giulia Jeary Knap is available from http://amzn.to/2Em3JnS . Find out more here: http://fracieloeterra.org/afterlifebook