I’m excited to announce a discounted price to celebrate the approaching holiday season and my two books, The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Handhttp://amzn.to/2Em3JnS and Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation http://amzn.to/2E4fQmb in English.
Both books were originally published in Italian in 2014 and the English edition is an expanded and updated version approaching the topic of life after death also based on personal experience in the areas of mediumship, lucid dreaming and astral travel.
The reviews published by readers for both the Italian and the English version confirm that these books offer significant support and comfort at time of grief and loss and also encourage readers to reconsider the chance that they may themselves discover, firsthand, that our loved ones on the other side are alive and well and really willing to let us know they are in touch and available to watch over us and guide us if only we pay attention.
The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand: Three tried and tested methods to stay in touch with those who have gone before us
Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation
In 2008, 50-year old Tommy Laux was a happy and content man, with a beautiful soul partner, his wife Julie, and two beautiful and respectable children: Alicea, who was almost 20, and Raymond, who was 18.
Tommy was the president of a very successful company called TLC Woodworks, INC., a carpentry firm specializing in the production of wooden articles, including very original and unique customised items: among the customers were a number of VIPs who enjoyed being able to walk around the premises and negotiate their purchases without being harassed by reporters or fans seeking autographs. Because of their originality, Tommy and his partners had been named the “Outlaw Carpenters”. Tommy was also the co-founder of an original music band called the Smile ‘N’ Fish band and in those days the group’s studio was right next to the firm premises.
Besides being a wonderful wife and mum, Julie worked for the local school as a custodian. Every so often, she also wrote songs and sung herself.
Tommy went to school as required by law, but was not particularly
interested in competing for a high grade. He recalls he failed to graduate and
got a lot of Fs. He had learnt early in life the rule: lead, follow, or get
out of the way. So, the easiest way in his opinion, or the path of least
resistance, logically was to get out of the way! That is how he chose to become
a carpenter, a master craftsman, passionate about bringing some of the
otherwise dead trees back to life. «As far as I knew», he recalls «I was not
competing with anyone else but myself. I was not retarded, just challenged.
What I mean to say is, I constantly challenged myself. I could not understand
what they meant when they said to think outside the box. I must have
ditched school on that day. So lucky for me, I didn’t get a box, at
least not a strong box. At this point in my life, in my opinion, that proverbial
box is the human Ego».
This means Tommy was not biased by a specific line of thinking or belief system and this turned out to be a very lucky circumstance, in view of what happened to him that year.
Tommy lived with his family in Green Valley, California. On Wednesday, 16 July 2008, Tommy and Julie left with Tommy’s 2007 Harley Davidson motorcycle for a short holiday. They were to take part in a family reunion on Saturday, 19 July, at Tommy’s sister’s house in Pueblo, Colorado. On Sunday, July 20th, Tommy and Julie were on their way home and were about a half-hour away from Julie’s best friend’s house and their first leg of the trip home.
Life for them was as good as they might have possibly wished.
Tommy explains: «As we were cruising down the highway, outside of Montrose,
Colorado, an old couple in a Chevy pickup truck made a left turn in front of us
and we crashed. I have no recollection of the accident and impact at all».
All Tommy knows is that both he and Julie died as a result of that crash and that Julie did not make it.
What Tommy is able to report about those days comes
from his out-of-body consciousness or soul’s perspective: the moment he and
Julie died, he was with her in another higher dimension of consciousness.
Here is Tommy’s account:
«As a result of the crash, Julie and I both died and I
escorted Julie in a journey from which, as I was to find out, she would not be
returning.
It is so hard to put into words what was shown to me.
After all, how does a carpenter, an “Outlaw Carpenter” (based on the way our business
was named) begin to explain how he was shown a glimpse of eternity and
infinity, and yes, even death? My own death, and also my soul mate’s
unappealable death… or should I say, transformation of consciousness and
awareness?
Despite the difficulties, I will do my best to share what
happened to us beyond space and time.
As the medical staff later confirmed to me, my
conditions were so serious I was not expected to survive the accident.
What I remember, on the other hand, is that I was in another higher dimension of consciousness, and perceived reality from my out-of-body or soul’s perspective, which is completely different from the human, Ego- and fear-based perspective.
What one experiences, or what I experienced in that
moment, was like my soul being removed from the human form, or human condition.
My spirit/soul was more alive than ever, once I left the confining container
of my body.Julie and I were back Home, and re-joined with the great
Sprit, God, the Universe, or whatever labels we humans want to call it. We get
so hung up on the literal words that we lose the meanings. We were now free
again, out of time and space, and fully felt part of the Great Spirit, just as
the spiritual Masters I was blessed to meet.
What died at that moment, along with the body, was my
Ego. Before that moment I didn’t even know I had an Ego, but there it was,
decomposing with my container. Julie and I were returned to the energy of Love
that we were before we were born: my soul/spirit was free of all negativity,
even though I was to find out it would be just for that brief moment.
All of a sudden, I had no restrictions, no
fear, I was free to see whatever and whoever I wished and to go wherever I wanted.
For each of my questions I instantly received an answer and found that every
problem had a solution. I got the inner knowing that no problems exists on
Earth that are not created by humans. Like I said, it’s hard to put into words
something that most of us don’t get to return from.
I was shown not only my past fifty years of this life,
but also the many ramifications, the many alternate paths my life could have
taken in the past, in the present and in the future, with all their outcomes.
As to the big picture, the future I was shown was just
a projection of what would happen if we continued on the path we were on. By
the way, in my humble opinion, I feel the whole human species has been playing
the same Ego-related game for many thousands of years.
I did not experience this “life review” as if I were
watching a movie on a screen: it was like reliving it, and it all made sense.
I saw every event as a beautiful dream, only more brilliant and vivid. In fact,
the movie analogy comes in handy. If our lives were a movie, with our free
will, we would be the writer, the director, the producer, one of the actors,
and eventually the audience.
I now fully feel I have been blessed in this life in
many ways. And LOVE is the greatest gift of all. After my life review, I
feel we are all multidimensional beings.
About being with Julie at that
time, I sense she also had the choice to stay or go back, I sense the two of us
might have reached an agreement about who would come back, but the memory of
this possible negotiation eludes me. There, out of space and time, I felt I was
at last back Home and everything made sense anyway.
Whatever the case may be about the parts of the
experience I cannot remember, it was eventually made clear to me that, even
though Julie was welcome to stay, I was to come back to this earthly life to be
with our children. In the light of all this and of everything making sense for
me, I accepted, and the medical staff managed to get me back.
However, upon re-entering the body, I was faced with
overwhelming pain and with the realization that my wife would not be returning.
I simply could not stand it, I asked to be taken back and I flatlined a second
time.
Once again, it is difficult for me to find the words
to explain what happened when I got back to Heaven and the infusion of wisdom
and deeper understanding I received in the Spirit World during the second life
review. Imagine the download of a huge number of files, much more massive than
the previous one, granting me first-hand knowing of the underlying reasons for
so many things. It was not the sort of knowledge that comes from theoretical
study, but the practical understanding that comes from first-hand experience.
I am and always have been a doubting Thomas, according
to my wife, anyway. That is probably, and most likely, the reason why I found
myself hard to train. I was, for the first fifty years of my life, a
hard-working and subconscious machine. I questioned everything and understood
nothing. I was content with all the ups and downs of life as a self-taught
happy idiot.
However, here in the Spirit World I had this source
of direct knowledge at my full disposal. I now had a much deeper
understanding about life and death and about my role in the big picture. Like
other people who have experienced an NDE, I realized how short this physical life
is compared to that. So now, with more clarity and wisdom, l was asked
again to return to the physical world for my children and the doctors managed
to get me back again.
As I re-entered my physical body, I felt more pain
than before and realized I was unable to handle, not only the pain, but the grief
of all who knew my wife Julie… Even though I did not want to believe it, I
understood that in particular my son Raymond, who was only eighteen at the
time, would be faced with a terribly challenging loss. I realized I had been
mostly spared that grief, but at the same time I might be powerless in
attempting to convey my knew understanding to others, especially to those who
were closer and dearer to me.
Imagine returning from a trip where you were given the
solution to all the world’s problems, and you realize there are no problems
that people don’t create. Once again, I felt I simply could not handle it and I
flatlined for the third and final time.
The experience I had when I got back to Heaven was
deeper than I could imagine. Everything made perfect sense to me…. You see,
the only resistance I had to returning on the third trip back was the perceived
need for Ego in humans…. In spirit we have no Ego, no conditions, no
limits whatsoever. I felt I was one with the Universe and everything and
that every possible scenario would ultimately make sense.
I felt the deep meaning and related responsibility
involved in committing to come back to this dimension or this reality to try as
I may to share and help, not only my own children, but anyone who wants and/or
needs to know more about the truth and LOVE I experience beyond death. I
finally realized it was worthwhile to face the pain.
Everything made sense for me now: the human Ego and Ego-system and the illusions it is nourished by (such as fear, scarcity, selfishness, hatred, guilt, the belief that nothing exists beyond our material lives, and so on) has been in place for thousands of years. From that Ego-free perspective filled with LOVE, win-win circumstances are the only ones that have a meaning and they appear easily attainable. The imminent failure of the Ego-system appears obvious from the other side, from out of space and time.
In the Spirit World we do not
have an Ego and our true spiritual identity is free and eternal.
On this side, however, the Ego is unable to see itself and is terrified about any scenario involving its dissolution: here is why it constantly feels the need to fight for survival. Hence the failure of our system. It is obvious to all human beings that the system cannot and will not fix itself. By default, the Ego in all of us, including mine, would rather not be exposed! However, mine was brought into the light at death, and sent back to this reality to share.
Upon reawakening from my coma, I knew for sure that Julie had died (in
fact, also in view of my very critical conditions, her funeral had already been
held). However, it took me some time to remember my NDEs. In fact, even though
I have described them here in sequence, as I flatlined three times, I had three
life reviews, three increasingly deeper infusions of wisdom and two failed
attempts to come back to this physical world, for me, who was out of space and
time, it was one single experience.
One of the things I realized as I retrieved the memory of my trip to Heaven is that there is an open door between this dimension and what we call the Afterlife. What is even more important, I realised that that door had always been there, but only now was I consciously aware of it.
Even though I was an unpretentious and straightforward person, my choice
not to graduate and continue with my studies had somehow protected me from many
preconceived ideas; even though I realised my shortcomings, I deemed myself
lucky to be free from too many prejudices my Ego could feed on.
I was a creative carpenter, I loved music and had been writing songs and poems since I was 20. I was part of a musical band. I had always had this overabundance of artistic imagination. I failed the 1st grade because they called me a daydreamer. However, there was something special about the way I did all this and I only fully appreciated it after my NDE. For instance, after the accident, I had some friends helping me clean out the garage and found a briefcase with all my writings from the last 35 years in it. One of the things that was written back then, decades before my accident, was a poem called To Suffer Death but Could Not Die, which sounds like an amazing premonition: I remember writing it, but I don’t know where it came from. That’s where most of my writing comes from: I’m just the medium, I just hold the pen and let it flow through me.
I realized that writing in my early morning, when my Ego was not awake yet, allowed this creative force to flow at its best. I realized how, by writing at that time, my spirit was out of space and time and free to genuinely express itself.
It often happens to me to write things that make perfect sense only some
time “after” they have been written.
The open door I mentioned does not only have to do with
inspired writing: I constantly feel Julie’s presence with me, and since 2016,
when he passed, I continue to feel the presence of my son Raymond.
A few months after the accident it was suggested that I see a grief
counsellor, so I made an appointment. She asked me:
“Do you dream?”
“Yea I dream, doesn’t everybody?”
“But, do you dream about the accident?”
“No, I don’t remember the accident.”
“Do you dream about Julie?”
“I don’t know if I dream about her, but she’s here right now; if you call
that a dream, then I am dreaming right now.”
It was kind of a conversation where I didn’t know how to answer. It is
difficult for me to tell the difference between a memory and a dream because I
find that, in depth, there is very little separation between dreams and reality».
I have asked Tommy if he could better explain how he senses his loved ones on the other side. He tells me that, even though they are invisible to his physical eyes, while awake, he clearly senses their presence. He also tells me that the most vivid perception happens in his sleep, though it is not he who seeks the connection: it simply happens. He told me that sometimes he goes to see them and sometimes they come to see him. He tells me: «It is my spirit that does it. I don’t try to control it. It is like living with one foot in the physical world and one on the other side».
I have asked Tommy whether he has a method to finetune the connection with
the other side and he tells me he has a way to switch off the brain, thus
shifting to a non-thinking mode, which some call meditation, some call prayer
and some call daydreaming… Labels are not important. The key focus is
to turn off the Ego, which feeds on and nourishes our fear of death and is
unable to see itself. «Prayer is only one of the words we use to define
meditation or focused thought/energy. Most of our beliefs are not accurate. The
truth is LOVE. God is LOVE».
Tommy tells me that he has come back with a great awareness as to his own responsibility. He knows he has an important message to share and that he will continue doing so for the rest of his life. At the same time, he knows that whoever is on the receiving end is free to interpret and understand his words based on their own experience, education, belief system and personality. He stresses that we all have a choice: always. We all have free will regarding our existence and the way we go about our life. This also affects the way Tommy’s message will reach the recipient. He conveys his thoughts in good faith but with the awareness that these are then decoded and interpreted based on the recipient’s free will.
When I asked him (yet again) whether he and Julie had had a chance to reach an agreement as to who of the two would be coming back, he tells me he senses they both had a choice and they possibly had the opportunity to negotiate his return, but the memory eludes him.
It seems more than a coincidence that on 10 September 2001, the day before
the September 11th no one will probably ever forget, a video was
made of Julie singing a song she had written. The song goes “Take me Home…
to Paradise” and a link to the YouTube video can be found at the end of
this article.
Tommy tells me the more he hears stories of people
grieving a loss, the more he realizes the blessing he had from going there and
being with Julie in that journey he was so reluctant to come back from. He
has taken with him the first-hand knowing that life and love are forever, which
involves feeling Julie’s and Raymond’s presence always with him.
Tommy adds: «However, strong, weak, and/or neutrally connected you are to the Source of Life/the Great Spirit, at this stage of my soul’s evolution the Divine is known to me as the power of love for all beings, and not (and I must repeat NOT) the love of power over all. When I think of Heaven now, I realize that Earth is part of it… We are making hell of it, but we will evolve or at least try. Even the end of times as described in the Bible is just a projection of a new beginning, in my humble opinion.
What most terrifies the Ego is the end of its own
existence. But death and the dissolution of the Ego is just a reawakening to
our real self and a new beginning.
And I am feeling that right now as I write this. As I recall this experience it takes me back to that peaceful place and timeless time. Out of my mind? Yes of course, and out of my body also. I go there often when I am alone and am allowed to go deep into myself. You can call it meditation or prayer, or whatever you like. When I say “into myself” I am describing what projects me out there into the essence of the source of life. What I mean is I can see my human Ego form, struggling with my formless soul trying to bring it back into shape and into this reality. The Ego is taught to fear its own death.
There is much, much more I need to write about. I will
continue writing about this for the rest of my life, so that whoever wishes to
listen and gain a benefit from the experience I share may do so.
Mainly, though, I was sent back to help myself, first.
To learn from and then teach my little people, my two children, Alicea and
Raymond. They are, after all, a reflection of their mother and me, and of
course, the social engineers of society, as we know it.
This brings a tear to my eye. Not because I failed to
reach my son before he died from a broken heart in 2016, but because I did.
Julie and Raymond are always with me».
I once again asked Tommy whether the opportunity of being “with” Julie at the time of her transition, having taken her Home, having felt how it felt to be both part of the Divine means, even though he was not allowed to stay, has made a difference in his life, and Tommy replied: «Yes, the being with her has never gone away. Once you go through the door to the other side it remains open as it always has been. Like it is with God: there is no separation from that love that we humans don’t create».
Mr Tommy Joe Laux is the author of the soon to be published book EGONOMICS 101: The Awakening Has Begun… Within or Without You. You may contact him at smilenfish@gmail.com. His Facebook account is https://www.facebook.com/tommy.laux.3. At the time he had his NDE he was the President of TLC Woodworks, INC., a very successful carpentry firm presented in this reality video trailer, which was shot in 2008, the very year he had the accident:
Tommy is also the co-founder of an original music band called the Smile ‘N’ Fish band. Here is a link to the 10 September 2001 video featuring Julie Laux as she sings the song “Take me Home”:
I have always been curious about the Afterlife, but when my grandma passed away in 1988 my curiosity turned into the urge to check on her and make sure she was safe. My first discovery was that dreams were a door leading to other dimensions, but, owing to my grief, I seemed to have no control over the nightmares that grief could lead to. Here is why I would like to discuss the power of lucid dreaming and how meditation can help.
A lucid dream is a dream in which we are aware that we are dreaming. On the other hand, meditation is a simple practice, usually performed by sitting in a quiet room or outdoor setting, with the aim of quietening our mind and focusing inwards. How and why are these two states linked to after-death communication?
People often report visitations by their deceased loved ones in dreams. However, in a dream in which we are aware of dreaming it is much easier to actually plan to meet our loved ones on the other side, because we are partly in charge of the experience.
Now the real question is: Why is after-death communication more easily achieved in dreams, lucid dreams and meditation?
In his essay ‘The Doors of Perception’ Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) refers to the theory of French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson (1859–1941) whereby the chief purpose of the brain, the nervous system and the sensory organs is to eliminate information rather than produce it. Here is what the essay says:
“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”
According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.
Therefore, the ordinary or ‘normal’ state of consciousness is a measly trickle of concepts compared to what we are capable of knowing.
Upon physical death, this reducing valve ceases to exist. Hence, many people who have had near-death experiences report the sensation of being inundated with a universal consciousness.
There are other circumstances, however, such as the meditative state or dreams, which allow us to loosen our reducing valve and tune into the spirit world.
In order to achieve this goal, it is very important to disconnect from daily tasks or concerns that require our full and/or earthly attention (such as driving a car, cooking a meal, worrying about what so-and-so may be gossiping about and so on) and allow our reducing valve to loosen. In our case, this is not aimed at being inundated with a universal consciousness, but at shifting from our ‘ordinary’ state of consciousness to what scientists call a ‘modified’ or ‘non ordinary’ state of consciousness. Like a laser beam, we will use this opportunity to focus on something specific, such as communicating with a loved one in spirit.
As mentioned, meditation is a simple practice, usually performed by sitting in a quiet room or outdoor setting, at a time when we are reasonably sure we will not be disturbed. Most people find it easier to meditate with their eyes closed, so that their attention is directed inwards. All we need to do at this point is focus the mind on something, such as:
following or counting one’s breath
a meaningful word or phrase
visualisation of a peaceful place
In our case, the purpose of meditation is threefold:
Relaxing
Silencing our mind and inner dialogue so as to disconnect from the outer world
Loosening our reducing valve and increasing our inner awareness so that we may increase the chances of having a lucid dream
As J. Alexander suggests in his books on the topic, starting with two-minute sessions at a time is an excellent way of approaching a new habit (or resuming it) because two minutes is such a short time that we would really have no excuse to avoid it. Even a person in deep grief, who may suffer from concentration problems, cannot be put off by this exercise. Once we feel confident about the practice and realise how beneficial it can be, we may find ourselves naturally extending the session if we so desire.
There are three ideal times to use meditation in order to plan our dreams and then enter a lucid dream directly from our waking state:
Just before going to bed.
This is usually a time when we are probably too tired to enter a lucid dream directly. However, meditation will help us fall asleep and will grant us the opportunity to plan our lucid dream visitation for later on.
After 5 or 6 hours of sleep.
At this stage, our body will be refreshed enough for our mind to easily enter a lucid dream. This is the best time to resume our evening meditation and use it to observe the fleeting visual, auditory and perceptual sequences that we usually experience during the stage known as the hypnagogic state, which takes us directly from wakefulness to sleep – in other words, from a state in which we are mostly aware of physical reality to one where we are asleep, disconnected from most of the stimuli of the physical world and have access to the finer dimensions known as astral plane and spirit world.
With exercise, we will find that we can extend the hypnagogic stage and, sooner or later, we will be able to hold on to this twilight state of awareness and actually enter a dream in which we are aware of dreaming with no interruption in our waking consciousness.
Upon waking up in the morning if we have no urgent engagements.
At weekends or on days in which we have no pressing commitments, we may count on an added bonus. Our mind will be even more refreshed and relaxed and we will have extra time to train.
All the above suggestions also apply to out-of-body experiences (or OBEs). Indeed, during a lucid dream our mind is aware enough to actively seek greater awareness and reach a stage called ‘mind awake – body asleep’: in this state our physical body is disconnected from the physical world but our mind is in a state of daytime wakefulness. The only difference between lucid dreaming and a full-blown OBE depends on the degree of ‘mind wakefulness’ we reach while asleep: the greater our awareness, the more solid and tangible the experience, as well as our recall upon waking up.
One last piece of advice: take a few minutes to write down your dream or OBE memories as soon as you wake up, before your reducing valve shuts down and you are back to waking-time consciousness.
PODCAST – “How caring support may help those suffering loss make their own decisions on how to grieve – An Interview with Author David Pierce Jr.”
An anthology with over 30 contributing authors experiencing personal loss through the death of a loved one, or the death of an essential part of themselves, tell their stories.
These stories are deep, rich and intimate, and they reveal the extreme pain and confusion, the shock and emptiness of living with death.
The message of hope that this anthology conveys lies in the fact that all contributors, in sharing their experience, also explain how they each found their own unique way to live with their heart-breaking pain, even though they might have at first felt absolutely lost, and decided to share their personal story with the reader or with whoever might draw inspiration and drive from their experience, in order to find in life a bigger picture and new reasons to carry on.
The editor, David Pierce, who with his wife Judy founded the social movement Friends Along the Road, has been working in the field of bereavement support ever since 1999, through the administration of dedicated message boards and Facebook groups and all sorts of activities and events designed to offer sanctuary and caring support to those in grief, a physical or virtual space where to rest and seek comfort along one’s path. Both David and Judy have contributed to the anthology.
This has been David and Judy Pierce’s mission ever since their lives were shattered and changed forever following the sudden loss of their precious fourteen-year-old daughter Lilli, due to an accident as she was crossing the road on her way back home in the late afternoon of a tragic Friday, on 12 November 1999.
In 2002, David and Judy embraced the philosophy of Sanctuary and Caring Support. Finding that there are many misconceptions about death and grief, they came to understand that grief is an entirely personal experience, and that no one should suggest how another ought to experience it. However, the Pierces were encouraged by wonderful professional counseling organizations and healing networks that adhere to the ideas of safety, comfort, and unconditional positive regard. Especially important to David’s thinking was Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death and the Theory of Caring as conceived by Kristen M. Swanson, Ph.D., R.N. Although Dr. Swanson’s ideas are directed toward nursing and clinical practice, David found them an excellent model for FAR’s work of creating sanctuary. David realized that sometimes, the best thing one can do for a person in grief is to offer safe and comfortable places. Friends Along the Road makes such places available, recommends similar places created by others, and teaches the art of Sanctuary Anywhere for those in grief.
David and Judy are currently living in Pueblo, Colorado.
David enjoys writing flash fiction, hiking, gardening, treasure-hunting, body-surfing, and dreaming. He is the administrator of two dreaming forums on the Internet. It is his hope to someday write children’s books and other fiction.
The second edition of this anthology has just been published and will soon be made available in Kindle format.
This extraordinary awakening (in all senses) took place at dawn on 23 May 2008.
At the time, I worked as a full-time translator for a number of translation agencies, and I often had to catch up on my work at night. That particular night, I had gone to bed knowing I had 14 pages to translate by 7 am the next morning. In ordinary waking reality, this would have meant getting up at least four or five hours before my deadline, in the early hours of the morning. But I also had numerous other things on my mind. Earlier that evening, my car engine had almost burnt out because of a leak in the radiator. With the car broken down, I was unable to pick up my 11-year-old son from the gym. It was 7 pm and all the shops and petrol stations were closing. This and a series of other difficulties meant I had to move the translation down my list of priorities that evening.
Anyway, at around 4.30 am I was still in bed and already three hours behind schedule. I was in a twilight state of consciousness, when I started experiencing a lucid awareness of being simultaneously in timeand ‘out of time’. Only an hour earlier, I am sure I would have gone mad if I had tried to get into this state of consciousness. Yet, there I was, able to hold both notions in my mind at the same time, with no effort and no urge to shift from one state to the other.
Anything I wanted to do had both not happenedyet and, simultaneously, had already happened. The reason I did not need to shift from one perspective to the other was that both realities were true for me at the same time.
Lingering in this amazing state of consciousness for quite a while, I concentrated my thoughts on various situations in my life and realised that whatever goal I had in mind, it would take no effort to achieve it. This was because, in the ‘bigger time’ in which I was immersed, it had already happened. Even the 14 pages I had to translate, the thought of which would normally have made me leap out of bed in a state of panic, had already been translated and in ideal circumstances.
This extraordinary state of awareness was followed by a dream brimming with positive results, practical situations that I could see and examine in vivid detail. In each scenario it was clear to me that the way we perceive the outcome of our efforts is merely a facet of life, which can reach its full manifestation once we have learnt to apply the secret of ‘big time’. At the time, this concept was closely linked to what I had been studying for years regarding what is widely known today as the ‘law of attraction’.
The feelings and ideas that followed on that very challenging morning, and which are still with me now, were:
a) It is possible to have access at any time to the ‘big time’ in which our goals have already been reached.
b) I experienced a great sense of relaxation and the ability to take things easy, since no mental effort is required to achieve something that has already happened.
c) I felt a renewed wave of vital energy coming from the awareness that any goal that has already been set, no matter how farfetched, has already manifested in ‘big time’, and that the small linear time we experience only exists to give us a sense of achievement.
Needless to say, my translation work flowed smoothly that morning, taking much less time than it normally would – and, happily, the agency I was working for had set my deadline well in advance of the time they actually needed it.
This was my greatest breakthrough since I had started challenging the concept of linear time.
What I learnt over the years
The crucial outcome of this experience and of the experiences it led to was that:
I started realising firsthand that our point of power is always NOW. This is the time we have control over our life and this is the time when we can, not only appreciate what this physical dimension is all about, but make the most of it. I also realised how and why our Higher Self is always reaping the benefits of past, present, and future times beyond linear time.
I understood how the notions of reincarnation and the Afterlife are distorted whenever they are viewed from a physical linear-time point of view, and that we never experience a real separation from our living and departed loved ones, not even in our darkest moments.
I learnt that meditation can lead to a relaxed state in which we can get glimpses of what it feels like being out of time and feel safer about the decisions we make in an expanded state of awareness.
Last but not least, the law of attraction now really makes sense to me, as I know it is not by ‘asking for’ something (thus acknowledging it is not here), but by ‘knowing’ that something already exists that we actually impact our lives.
The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand and Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation by Giulia Jeary Knap are available from http://amzn.to/2Em3JnS and http://amzn.to/2E4fQmb. Find out more here: http://fracieloeterra.org/en/
Having always been curious about the Afterlife, I have spent most of my life researching it from various angles, by:
Reading firsthand accounts by deep-trance mediums from the 19th and early 20th century
Attending classes held by professional mediums
Interviewing people who had had near-death experiences
Reading books and articles by other Afterlife researchers
Exploring the Afterlife with the aid of meditation, lucid dreams (dreams in which we are aware that we are dreaming) and out-of-body experiences
Teaming up with other Afterlife researchers to obtain mutual evidence about our findings
The most moving years involving regular exchange of evidence with other researchers were those ranging from 2002 to 2012, when I was able to actively take part in an American forum with about 20 members from around the world, all with an interest in spiritual matters. It was more than a forum: we were a group of friends, although in most cases we had only met each other online and spoken on the telephone. Each of us had lost at least one person who had been dear to us in life.
The founders were David and Judy Pierce, an American couple whose lives were shattered and changed forever following the sudden loss of their precious 14-year-old daughter Lilli, due to an accident as she was crossing the road on her way back home in the late afternoon of a tragic Friday, on 12 November 1999. David and Judy are also the founders of the social movement Friends Along the Road, which has been working in the field of bereavement support ever since 1999, through the administration of dedicated message boards and Facebook groups and all sorts of activities and events designed to offer sanctuary and caring support to those in grief, a physical or virtual space where to rest and seek comfort along one’s path.
One of the many activities of this very private forum was what we called an ‘Astral Party’, a kind of virtual gathering that could last for several days. It was sometimes held around someone’s birthday, but could also be unrelated to any particular occasion. Each of us took part according to our own inclinations, be it through meditation, dreams, OBEs, and so on. After the event, we would discuss our experiences on the forum. Very often, these meetings allowed us to focus our intentions like a laser beam, which had miraculous effects.
Many people who are interested in after-death communication are put off by the idea that astral travel is not necessarily easy to achieve. Our Astral Parties were a great opportunity to find out for ourselves that out-of-body experiences are in no way essential for ADC purposes: in fact, they showed how the same piece of information can be conveyed in different ways and how apparently different accounts could lead to the same conclusions and shared evidence.
The most fascinating aspects about our Astral Parties had to do with situations in which:
We found we had done something on the astral plane we did not recollect but which another member of the team could describe.
Participants did not need to belong to the core group, as we occasionally invited drop-in guests who could not read or write in English but were nonetheless able to participate and benefit from the gathering. Of course experiences were then reported in the Astral Party thread.
Here are a couple of examples:
In one case I had invited an Italian friend who desperately wanted to have news about her stillborn baby. I explained to her on the phone how the astral gathering worked and simply asked her to tune into the party that night. The following morning I was amazed to hear from her something I had no recollection of. She told me that, during the night, I had been at her side, awoken her from her sleep and taught her how to have an out-of-body experience, something she successfully had even though she had never read anything about it. This had a unique effect on her, because she got firsthand evidence that we are not necessarily one with our physical bodies and are able to travel to other dimensions. Thanks to this acknowledgement, she was able to break out of the mental prison that had prevented her from hearing from her daughter in dreams and lucid dreams, as she has excitedly reported to me over the years.
In another case I invited an Italian friend who had just lost her 39-year old husband in a motorcycle accident. Even though her 15-year old son had had constant dream visitations by his dad since his death, she felt so devastated she only experienced nightmares. So she tuned into our gathering that night, and, as she was dozing off, she had the most striking experience I have ever heard of. She heard her deceased husband turn the front door key, walk into the flat and along the corridor up to the bathroom. After that, she heard the familiar sound of him taking a shower as he used to do at the end of a day’s work. Then she heard him walk towards the bedroom and felt him get into bed and hug her. He also spoke to her before she returned to a full waking state and found she was alone in bed. During the experience, she was fully aware that her husband was ‘dead’, yet this was an absolutely solid experience which permanently deleted the memory of the shocking sight of her husband lying motionless in a coffin.
These two stories are just an example of how teaming up with other Afterlife researchers can enhance results: they go to show how powerful these gatherings are, because of the dedication our small group could direct towards the outcome of each participant’s experience, irrespective of their individual path and circumstances. The forum in question was Lilli Pierce and the Big Trip and a number of the experiences mentioned in my books were the result of teamwork.
…Needless to say, when interpreting the telepathic message in which the Being of Light reveals the heroic nature of incarnation, Dannion seems to suggest that a similar need to ‘progress’ exists in both the incarnate and disincarnate form. This once again raises the issue of linear time, although Dannion does not suggest that spirit guides live within it. While, admittedly, linear time is not the only yardstick available to us for measuring events, it is nevertheless part of the ‘big picture’ and, without it, certain ideas could not have come into existence. If a discarnate spirit is dealing with a recently discarnate spirit who, as in Dannion’s case, is about to go back into time, I believe the former must have shared its common purpose with the latter, covering all things, including the sensation of making progress and the notion of time.
What I want to emphasise here is the message that, while these spiritual entities appear not to ‘have the courage’ to enter the physical plane, the partnership created between those who come to this world and those who follow us from the other world is a win-win situation. It is a shared victory involving two mutually beneficial approaches, free from judgment and hierarchy.
Hence, if incarnation involves refining our personal identity in the heroic act of co-creating with God, then developing this illusory conviction of being separate from God and from each other is the inevitable guise we must wear every day during our time on the earthly plane – at least at this stage of the creative process we have apparently chosen to take part in.
This guise – the part of us that is responsible for keeping this illusion alive – is what I call the Ego or the ‘earthly self’. The Ego is a guiding voice that enables us to operate efficiently in our everyday lives. It directs us through the plethora of situations in which we find ourselves.
This guiding voice seems to be an integral part of our physical reality, with the specific purpose of keeping us soundly anchored to all that is material, even in the subtlest of ways. The main purpose of the Ego is to reinforce constantly the illusion that only the physical/material plane is real, and that everything on this plane revolves around suffering, everything is transient and time is master. Anything else is an illusion, the imagination, a hallucination, a dream, or even disease, psychiatric imbalance, dissociation or schizophrenia….
Here are some of my findings on what we usually refer to as incarnation or reincarnation:
Past life regression sessions are often laden with ‘leading questions’ (i.e. questions that tend to prompt or encourage a specific answer) and hence project researchers’ beliefs in earthly drama into the Afterlife.
Unless we are comfortable about it, there is no need to paint a picture of the Afterlife as a sequence of different lives lived one after anotherwithin linear time, ruled by guilt, judgment, punishment and fear.
Discarnate beings have no way of understanding the true nature of human suffering, though they appreciate the heroism of those who choose the leap into the darkness that incarnation involves.
Conversely, those who choose to experience one or more physical incarnations, are not bound by linear time and are always connected with our Divine Source, their Whole Self and their discarnate guides, in a win-win partnership that is free from judgment or hierarchy.
Some of the most important points I make and provide evidence for in my book on reincarnation are:
At all stages of our multidimensional existence we are co-creating with our Divine Source thanks to our unique and eternal personal identity, and are constantly reaping the benefits of past, present and future.
We have boundless reserves of spiritual energy and vitality that we have access to at all times on the earthly plane, provided we understand that unconditional love is the source and end of all things and always see in others the reflection of ourselves.
In spite of death and multidimensionality, we never really lose the people dear to us, not even in our darkest moments. The spirit world is in fact our world and we have amazing creative powers we only need to acknowledge and tap into.
As co-creators with our loving Source, we all have a mission in life, which guides us every day and always, even through the circumstances and with the people who seem to cross our paths by chance.
Once we realise all this, we also realise that our point of power is always NOW: it is now that we can free ourselves of any unhelpful memories or emotions, gain control over our choices, affect any past, present or future outcome, achieve apparently impossible goals and make the most of our physical adventure.
Whenever we catch ourselves regretting the past or fearing the future, it is always a relief to realise how brave we are for being here and now and for taking advantage of the tools that all human beings have on this physical plane to really make the difference for all Creation.
In other words, we are not all robots placed unwillingly in an overpowering and overcomplex system of life, death and rebirth that is beyond our control. At the same time, we are not here because we have been kicked out of the Garden of Eden, but are divine sparks bravely exploring/creating this denser/physical plane to better appreciate aspects that are taken for granted in the finer spiritual dimensions. As Mellen-Thomas Benedict found out in his NDE, ‘we are literally God exploring God’s Self’.
The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand and Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation by Giulia Jeary Knap are available from http://amzn.to/2Em3JnSand http://amzn.to/2E4fQmb. Find out more here: http://fracieloeterra.org/en/
Like many other people, I have always been fascinated with the idea of time travel: I have come to the conclusion that this stems from a need for confirmation as to whether or not life continues after death and whether or not the soul is eternal. I believe it also comes from a need to have a certain degree of control over our lives, irrespective of what mistakes we make and the misunderstandings we create in our dealings with the people around us, often in spite of ourselves. In other words, it coincides with our interest in the concept of reincarnation. This, in turn, has led to a series of hypotheses concerning karma and the cycle of rebirths.
Moreover, to some extent, the concept of reincarnation provides a credible escape from the fear of judgment after death, much dreaded by almost all traditional religions. As Andy Tomlinson says in his book, Exploring the Eternal Soul – Insights from the Life Between Lives, an examination of discoveries made under hypnotic regression regarding the existence of the soul between lives:
The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with ensuring that they would gain a favorable ruling when they came to the ‘Judgment Hall of Osiris’ and their heart was ‘weighed in the balance’. This would ensure their soul’s immortality because an adverse ruling would necessitate its destruction. Indeed the elite of their society spent considerable sums having inscriptions on the walls of their tombs and their sarcophagi that contained all the spells they would need to pass the ultimate test.
At least in Ancient Egypt they had a sense of how to draw things to a conclusion, with unworthy souls destroyed. By contrast, their Mesopotamian counterparts believed that those who obtained an adverse judgment from the gods who ‘decreed their fate’ were destined to live on in the ‘netherworld’, in a kind of gray limbo state. Even worse, by the time their influence had filtered down through Judaism and into the Christian Church, we find that unworthy souls are condemned to everlasting torment. It seems that the primary motivation for this development was not new spiritual insight, but instead the desire to keep the uneducated masses under control. After all, what could be more successful than to threaten them with eternal damnation and torment if they stepped out of line?
Therefore, since ancient times, the concept of rebirth has been a stratagem to avoid eternal damnation, or even the annihilation of the soul.
However, the traditional concept of karma as a process of ‘action and reaction’ and the ‘payment of debts’ is currently being replaced by those who study hypnotic regression to so-called past lives. A far less reductive and simplistic concept, it is based on the idea that, immersed in the beatitude of what people under hypnosis often define as ‘light realms’, the soul becomes impatient and longs for learning and growth, often through the experience of overcoming difficult circumstances. To do so, it works with a group of companion souls or soul group, to design a custom set of circumstances, challenges and lessons to learn in each incarnation.
Reincarnation also helps soften the blow of losing a loved one. For instance, I have known people who found great relief in the idea that their misfortune may be a way of making up for evil deeds committed in a past life.
However, the accounts provided by near-death experiencers and by discarnate spirits who have described their transition through deep-trance mediums, tell us that three-dimensional space and linear time only govern our physical waking life. This notion is also backed up by the latest findings in the field of quantum physics.
In particular, near-death experiencers who have had access to this notion describe past, present and future lives as all taking place ‘simultaneously’while they observed them from the point of view of their own indestructible personal identity, which I like to refer to as our Whole Self. When we exclude the notions of space and time as we know them (something we can also experience in our dreams), it is very difficult to find logical, rational, analytical explanations (as prenatal regression researchers feel obliged to do) for the multidimensional nature of the soul. Even the concepts of evolution and growth lose substance once the concept of linear time is removed from the equation. This is because, at least in our dimension, both are inextricably linked to the linearity of time.
As I researched the topic, I realised that, in order to cope with this linearity, we develop the illusory conviction of being separate from our Divine Source and from each other, something that newborn children are unaware of, at least until they are taught the difference between ‘I’ and ‘you’.
I realised that we humans have probably chosen to express our exquisitely spiritual qualities through a limited and limiting view on life, like goldfish who only see what lies just outside their bowl. This is what I call ‘the fishbowl perspective’ in my book on incarnation.
It may sound cruel to deliberately abide by this illusion, which unfortunately includes the fear that death may be the end. However, by examining life as if through a magnifying glass, we can appreciate things that in the world of pure spirit we simply take for granted, even if this means temporarily losing our bird’s eye view.
Here is why I started viewing man not as a an arrogant being challenging God’s authority, but as a hero who is actively co-creating with our Divine Source.
I realise that the issue is not a simple one and that it is often much easier to deal with adversity by turning to the unfathomable plane of the divine. On the other hand, if I had not had direct experiences giving me glimmers of light on this subject, I would most likely have no opinion on incarnation, let alone reincarnation.
The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand and Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation by Giulia Jeary Knap are available from http://amzn.to/2Em3JnSand http://amzn.to/2E4fQmb. Find out more here: http://fracieloeterra.org/en/
I clearly remember there was a stage in my life, until I was around five or six years old, when I was always happy and never felt I really missed anything. Life was filled with bliss and magic and I felt anything was possible. Then, for no apparent reason, there was an almost overnight change and I realised that blissful period of magic was over for good: I guess I had started growing up and sadly started being taught that I was separate and disconnected from the rest of the world.
Nonetheless, my keen curiosity about life’s great mysteries was very strong and I soon started reading all sorts of books illustrating scientific theories about the universe and the history of mankind. In particular, I found it strange that scientific research should be based on the assumption that everything is separate from everything else. I took an interest in romantic science fiction too, for the same reason. For instance, I loved the idea that it might be possible to travel into the past and make a different choice, to avoid an undesirable outcome, such as saving lives.
I remember I was around nine when I started experiencing intense episodes of déjà vu. When the movie Déjà Vu was released in 2006, I realised this was only one of the many sci-fi stories that linked in with my research about our multidimensional nature and my effort to bridge the gap between my early years in which I knew anything was possible and my adult understanding filled with questions. I discuss this matter at length in my book Looking beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation.
I have recently come across a presentation by author and speaker Gregg Braden, internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science, spirituality, and the real world. He explained in plain terms my non-technical mind could understand how for thousands of years ancient, indigenous and spiritual traditions have simply assumed that everything is connected, whereas science and later quantum physics have been struggling for the last 300 years to come to the same conclusion, starting from the opposite assumption: that everything is separate.
The recent conclusions of a number of scientific experiments seem to be coming close to proving that some sort of intelligent field of energy (who some refer to as the quantum field, the matrix or God) actually exists. In Gregg’s words:
The field is the container for all things: from the perspective that science sees it now, everything exists within this field, the universe exists within the field, nothing exists out of the field. So all things that are happening are happening within this field.
The field is a bridge between us and the world around us, between our inner and our outer worlds. This is important, because, when we offer healing energy or a prayer to a person on the other side of the world, we are able to affect things thanks to the field.
The energy of this field is a mirror in the world around us for what we claim to be true in the world within us: we all have beliefs and expectations about what is true and is possible in the world – sometimes they are conscious, sometimes they are not – but, irrespective of this, the world is always telling us what our true beliefs are.
Quantum physics is now studying how and why:
we are all connected;
we do not simply observe reality but actually create it through our emotions;
we can be in more than one place at once and actively travel between dimensions.
These notions really bridge the gap between my inner knowing as a child and my deeply rooted desire to obtain firsthand evidence about the possibility of doing apparently impossible things. These include visiting the Afterlife, checking on my loved ones and opening up to spiritually transformative experiences that have led to further insights about the power of positive expectation.
I now realise that the need to read about these topics and then seek firsthand evidence must have been a reminder set up by my Whole Self for my earthly self, beyond space and time, so that I may not lose track of my real purpose for experiencing this physical life: rediscovering that we are powerful spiritual beings with an eternal and indestructible personal identity… and sharing the good news with as many as possible.
I realise that a person in grief who is seeking confirmation that a departed loved one is alive absolutely needs to tap into the power of positive expectation. Here is why I feel that firsthand evidence confirming my gut feeling that death is just an awakening from a temporary illusion may prove of critical help at such times.
I think most people reading this book have wondered about the purpose of our existence on the physical plane. This is especially true for those who have glimpsed for themselves – not merely been told – that there is so much more beyond this earthly dimension.
I have often asked myself questions like, ‘Who are we?’, ‘What are we doing here?’ and, ‘What happens after death?’
Over the years, I have been increasingly convinced that incarnation is our entry into the illusory state of being separate from God – also referred to as our ‘Divine Source’ or the ‘Supreme Source’ of life. As a result, we also perceive ourselves as separate from each other.
I do not believe this concept of incarnation has always existed in the history of humankind. I think that is why many cultures and religions talk about a mythical past when man lived happy and safe. However, in all such stories, man committed some transgression and lost that safety.
For example, according to the legend of Adam and Eve (specifically, the simplistic version of the original Hebrew myth[1] found in the Book of Genesis), man challenged God’s authority by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result, he was expelled from Earthly Paradise and became mortal.
Past life and interlife scholars also tell us that in their hypnotic regression sessions, they have encountered the idea that, as they are planning their ‘next’ incarnation, ‘young’ souls can show signs of ‘arrogance’. They do not listen to the advice of ‘Elders’ on what percentage of vital energy and emotional baggage to take with them to the physical plane. This determines their existential failure.
The notion that the trials and tribulations of humankind could be the result of some sort of challenge or arrogance shown towards the Divine (or the ‘Elders’) is, in my view, rather demeaning to humanity itself. It is also the source of much pointless suffering, as man has long been afflicted with a sense of guilt simply for being born.
On 17 September 1975, Dannion Brinkley, a 25-year-old from South Carolina with a rather shady past, was at home talking on the phone during a thunderstorm, when lightning struck the telephone line, unleashing thousands of volts of electricity into his body and smashing him against the ceiling. His heart stopped and, after being rushed to hospital, he was pronounced dead. His death certificate was prepared, he was covered with a sheet and about to be taken to the mortuary. He was clinically dead for 28 minutes before waking up on a hospital trolley. He tried to attract the attention of the people who, luckily, were with him in the hallway, by blowing on the sheet covering his face. In those 28 minutes, Dannion experienced an amazing NDE, which he talks about in his book Saved by the Light: The True Story of a Man Who Died Twice and the Profound Revelations He Received[2].
That experience changed Dannion’s life forever. In what was to be the first of three near-death experiences (although, as Dr Parnia points out, the term is inaccurate because he was technically dead) Dannion was shown the purpose of his life by 13 ‘Beings of Light’.
After an illuminating life review, which he experienced while in the embrace of unconditional love of one of these Beings, Dannion felt ashamed of the selfish, aggressive and sometimes sadistic life he had led. But instead of castigating him, the Being transmitted love and joy to him, which he could only compare to the ‘non-judgmental compassion that a grandfather has for a grandchild’. It was then that the Being of Light told him:
‘Who YOU are is the difference that God makes … And that difference is love.’
Dannion continues: ‘There were no actual words spoken, but this thought was communicated to me through some form of telepathy. To this day, I am not sure of the exact meaning of this cryptic phrase. That is what was said, however.’ After some time spent reflecting on the love he had withheld in his life so far, his sense of guilt melted in the loving embrace of the Being of Light. Dannion adds:
I could hear the Being’s message in my head, again as if through telepathy: “Humans are powerful spiritual beings meant to create good on the earth. This good isn’t usually accomplished in bold actions, but in singular acts of kindness between people. It’s the little things that count, because they are more spontaneous and show who you truly are.”
At the end of this experience, contrary to his wishes, Dannion apparently had no say in whether he could stay in that charming place. This speaks volumes about whether or not ‘re-birth’ is the result of a superficial exercise of our free will. I would be inclined to say that Dannion’s Whole Self was awakened by the experience, giving him the sensation of having no choice. After various visions in which he was shown several world events that were likely to take place in the future, and the nature of his mission on Earth, Dannion says:
As these visions ended, I had the amazing realization that these Beings were desperately trying to help us, not because we were such good guys, but because without us advancing spiritually here on earth, they could not become successful in their world. “You humans are truly the heroes,” a Being told me. “Those who go to earth are heroes and heroines, because you are doing something that no other spiritual beings have the courage to do. You have gone to earth to co-create with God.”
Seen in this light, incarnation is not an act of defiance or arrogance, but a brave, heroic way of collaborating with the Divine Source that so many near-death experiencers describe. Spiritual beings use it to explore the furthest corners of what is ‘possible’, by creating new nuances and bringing their own unique, indestructible personal identity to the physical plane. On this journey, our spirit guides or guardian angels are not there to judge us from above if we fail to take their advice, but instead are fellow team players striving for the successful realisation of the Grand Design…
[1] Taken from similar Sumerian and late Babylonian accounts heard by Jews once a year during their period of captivity in Babylon. For more on this, see Igor Sibaldi in La creazione dell’Universo, Sperling & Kupfer Editori, 1999
[2] First published by Villard in 1994. Harper One; Reprint edition, 2008
As mentioned, meditation is a simple practice, usually performed by sitting in a quiet room or outdoor setting, at a time when we are reasonably sure we will not be disturbed. Most people find it easier to meditate with their eyes closed, so that their attention is directed inwards. All we need to do at this point is focus the mind on something, such as:
following or counting one’s breath
a meaningful word or phrase
visualisation of a peaceful place
In our case, the purpose of meditation is threefold:
Relaxing
Silencing our mind and inner dialogue so as to disconnect from the outer world
Loosening our reducing valve and increasing our inner awareness so that we may increase the chances of having a lucid dream
As J. Alexander suggests in his books on the topic, starting with two-minute sessions at a time is an excellent way of approaching a new habit (or resuming it) because two minutes is such a short time that we would really have no excuse to avoid it. Even a person in deep grief, who may suffer from concentration problems, cannot be put off by this exercise. Once we feel confident about the practice and realise how beneficial it can be, we may find ourselves naturally extending the session if we so desire.
There are three ideal times to use meditation in order to plan our dreams and then enter a lucid dream directly from our waking state:
Just before going to bed.
This is usually a time when we are probably too tired to enter a lucid dream directly. However, meditation will help us fall asleep and will grant us the opportunity to plan our lucid dream visitation for later on.
After 5 or 6 hours of sleep.
At this stage, our body will be refreshed enough for our mind to easily enter a lucid dream. This is the best time to resume our evening meditation and use it to observe the fleeting visual, auditory and perceptual sequences that we usually experience during the stage known as the hypnagogic state, which takes us directly from wakefulness to sleep – in other words, from a state in which we are mostly aware of physical reality to one where we are asleep, disconnected from most of the stimuli of the physical world and have access to the finer dimensions known as astral plane and spirit world.
With exercise, we will find that we can extend the hypnagogic stage and, sooner or later, we will be able to hold on to this twilight state of awareness and actually enter a dream in which we are aware of dreaming with no interruption in our waking consciousness.
Upon waking up in the morning if we have no urgent engagements.
At weekends or on days in which we have no pressing commitments, we may count on an added bonus. Our mind will be even more refreshed and relaxed and we will have extra time to train.
All the above suggestions also apply to out-of-body experiences (or OBEs). Indeed, during a lucid dream our mind is aware enough to actively seek greater awareness and reach a stage called ‘mind awake – body asleep’: in this state our physical body is disconnected from the physical world but our mind is in a state of daytime wakefulness. The only difference between lucid dreaming and a full-blown OBE depends on the degree of ‘mind wakefulness’ we reach while asleep: the greater our awareness, the more solid and tangible the experience, as well as our recall upon waking up.
One last piece of advice: take a few minutes to write down your dream or OBE memories as soon as you wake up, before your reducing valve shuts down and you are back to waking-time consciousness.
I have always been curious about the Afterlife, but when my grandma passed away in 1988 my curiosity turned into the urge to check on her and make sure she was safe. My first discovery was that dreams were a door leading to other dimensions, but, owing to my grief, I seemed to have no control over the nightmares that grief could lead to. Here is why I would like to discuss the power of lucid dreaming and how meditation can help.
A lucid dream is a dream in which we are aware that we are dreaming. On the other hand, meditation is a simple practice, usually performed by sitting in a quiet room or outdoor setting, with the aim of quietening our mind and focusing inwards. How and why are these two states linked to after-death communication?
People often report visitations by their deceased loved ones in dreams. However, in a dream in which we are aware of dreaming it is much easier to actually plan to meet our loved ones on the other side, because we are partly in charge of the experience.
Now the real question is: Why is after-death communication more easily achieved in dreams, lucid dreams and meditation?
In his essay ‘The Doors of Perception’ Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) refers to the theory of French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson (1859–1941) whereby the chief purpose of the brain, the nervous system and the sensory organs is to eliminate information rather than produce it. Here is what the essay says:
“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”
According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.
Therefore, the ordinary or ‘normal’ state of consciousness is a measly trickle of concepts compared to what we are capable of knowing.
Upon physical death, this reducing valve ceases to exist. Hence, many people who have had near-death experiences report the sensation of being inundated with a universal consciousness.
There are other circumstances, however, such as the meditative state or dreams, which allow us to loosen our reducing valve and tune into the spirit world.
In order to achieve this goal, it is very important to disconnect from daily tasks or concerns that require our full and/or earthly attention (such as driving a car, cooking a meal, worrying about what so-and-so may be gossiping about and so on) and allow our reducing valve to loosen. In our case, this is not aimed at being inundated with a universal consciousness, but at shifting from our ‘ordinary’ state of consciousness to what scientists call a ‘modified’ or ‘non ordinary’ state of consciousness. Like a laser beam, we will use this opportunity to focus on something specific, such as communicating with a loved one in spirit.
Since meditation can allow us to achieve this goal, and meditation just before falling asleep can lead to lucid dreaming, I have found that this technique can really work miracles.
Having always been curious about the Afterlife, I have spent most of my life researching it.
What really made a difference for me over the years was the fact I had started my research before suffering any severe loss. In fact, I remember being lucky enough to discuss the topic with both my grandmothers as a child and then as a young woman.
The reason I mention this is because I have found that we experience problems with after-death communication when we lose somebody dear to us. Grief over the physical loss of a loved one can shock us out of any belief system we might have put together over the years and cause us to seriously question any certainty we might have previously had. As I have also found out for myself, it can really take a lot of patience to process the physical loss of a loved one, even when you already have plenty of firsthand evidence that an Afterlife exists.
In particular, out-of-body experiences and vivid lucid dreaming helped me gain first-hand experience-based knowledge that our physical bodies are just a temporary vehicle, and that our consciousness can explore other dimensions that are just as real and solid as the physical plane.
Here are 5 myths I can dispel about the Afterlife, and the actual truths that lie behind them:
1. There is nothing morbid about feeling the urge to stay in touch
Having been brought up within a religion that discourages after-death communication and any attempt to understand what actually happens after death, I remember that no questions could be asked on the topic at Sunday School. The standard answer was that the dead should not be ‘disturbed’, they should ‘rest in peace’, they should not be ‘distracted’ from their path and that we should simply pray for the speedy evolution of their soul.
In fact, what I have found from all my sources and personal evidence is that our departed loved ones are eager to let us know they are alive, healed or uninjured, happy, safe and willing to take part in our lives, watch over us and guide us. I have also found that feeling their absence or suddenly thinking of them are both two clear signals they use to let us know that they are close.
2. Every religion or belief system centring on love is equally precious
According to some new age enthusiasts, following a specific religion or holding a certain belief system may cause trouble in the Afterlife, as our beliefs shape our destination. Religious fundamentalists like to use this argument too, in order to project the feeling of potential separation (which is typical of the physical world) into the Afterlife, so as to keep their believers in check. Hence the idea that we may end up in hell, be forced to reincarnate or even experience a ‘second death’.
In fact, according to the evidence I have put together, there is nothing wrong about holding a specific belief system during our physical lives, because those who have experienced death and reported back, in one way or the other, tell us that love is the essence and death is a joyful get-together.
3. Death is a time of reunion, not separation
When we leave this physical world and reawaken from the illusion that living a physical life involves, we also exit three-dimensional space and linear time. Even though our departed loved ones may go through a ‘period’ of rest and adjustment upon transition, through a ‘time’ of reflection or a life review, this does not hinder their presence around us, because the way they perceive time has no impact on our earthly time. In other words, death is an extremely gentle process, it is like walking from one room to another, knowing that those we have left behind, so to speak, will be with us in the blink of an eye. Even people who have been very evil (such as the former Nazi mentioned in the book Into the Light, by Dr. John Lerma) and experience the darkness of guilt for what appears ages, are not subject to our earthly time. In this specific case the patient was in a coma, when he had a near-death experience and ended up in a hellish environment. The time he felt it took him to overcome his sense of guilt and forgive himself for taking an active part in the genocide appeared to last for centuries. However, when he awakened from the coma, shortly before his death, and asked Dr Lerma how long he had been unconscious, he discovered the whole experience had taken place within 48 hours.
Last but not least, humans are multidimensional beings and may experience life on several levels and in several ways: hence the notion of reincarnation. However, based on my research and understanding, ‘if’ more than one life is recalled, they all come across as taking place ‘simultaneously’. This means that we never lose our loved ones, whatever the case may be. My book Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation is entirely devoted to this topic.
4. There is no such thing as ‘earth-bound’ spirits
Death does not involve the need to move on to ‘another’ place. The living and the dead are all made of the same essence: spirit. This means that, when we awaken from our physical life dream, we are instantly in our spirit home and realise that the physical plane is just the denser surface of a wonderful whole. Because of this, unlike near-death experiencers, those who die for good do not need to make a choice about it in order to be close to their loved ones in the physical world. They know that we are always together and it will take ‘no time’ for all their living family and friends to be aware of this too and be together in spirit.
The idea of ghosts and earth-bound spirits, along with the idea that unless a spirit ‘crosses over’ it will not be able to progress, is just a way of projecting earthly drama into the Afterlife.
While it is true that strong feelings of grief, anger, sadness and frustration experienced by the living can give rise to so-called poltergeist phenomena, which are the result of bottled up feelings, the dead only convey their presence in gentle, loving ways and do not take an active part in our lives unless we agree to it. The intrusive phenomena reported in connection with popular haunted sites are created by the psychic energy of living visitors and are nourished by their expectations.
5. There is no danger of getting off-track during the death process
Another popular way to project earthly drama into the Afterlife is to imagine that when we die we might not realise that we are dead, we may be unable to see the spirit guides or relatives who are on the other side to welcome us and may need to be rescued or retrieved by living people or by discarnates who have only recently died.
Once again this misconception is based on the idea that the Afterlife is ruled by linear time and earth-like forms of separation.
While it can be very beneficial for the living to connect with their loved ones after death and take part in their reawakening and adjustment process, it is by no means essential. Just as we have midwives to assist newborns, gentle spirits specialise in assisting us at times of transition if we so require, and every single detail is taken care of in the best of ways.
But is it true that our loved ones no longer exist and cannot be reached? What if we are simply tuned into the wrong channel? What if our loved ones are actually calling us, speaking, showing us things… but we do not notice? Perhaps they are right here next to us and we do not realise it, because we think they are in a completely different, inaccessible place.
This book will explore what it feels like to be ‘discarnate’ and how it feels to try to communicate with our loved ones here on the physical plane, who are sad, possibly depressed, crying and do not see us. We will read several descriptions of the wonderful world of Summerland described by many discarnate spirits, where our loved ones wait patiently for us to notice their presence, right here in our midst; and how they themselves say it is much easier to communicate with someone with whom they have a personal connection (a friend or relation) than with an ‘expert in communications’.
We will also explore three proven methods, designed to work at different times and in different situations and states of mind, which can be used to consciously control and keep track of a contact that continues unshakeably, despite the dissolution of the physical body.
The three methods we will look at in this book will be presented in three separate chapters. These are:
1) contact while awake in a quiet meditative state
2) enhancing our awareness while falling asleep
3) dreams and lucid dreaming
With all three of these methods, readers are advised to get into the habit of recording what they remember from their experiences in a notebook, diary or on a voice recorder, which they should always keep handy. As our contact with the Afterlife often happens while in a partially modified state of consciousness, it is hard to remember all the details once we return to ordinary or ‘normal’ consciousness, however simple it may seem at the time.
More importantly, we will discover that the chosen method or methods are within our grasp. They are extremely easy to apply, as long as we are committed, focused and ready to redirect some of our physical and mental energy away from the daily role-play in which we are trapped, and towards the immensely freer, lighter and precious bonds of affection that are always alive and connect us to our loved ones, whether in this life or the next.
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
I have now worked as a professional translator and interpreter for over 30 years, here in Italy. In fact, ever since I was a child, everyone used to ask me to assist when English-speaking people were around, as my mum is English. Therefore, I found out from a very early age how delightful it felt to help people understand one another. I guess this is one of the reasons I have always been extremely interested in after-death communication and mediumship, as mediums too are trained to help people communicate with one another even though one of the parties involved is in the Spirit World.
From a young age, I have also always had a keen curiosity about life’s great mysteries. I remember I was around nine when I started experiencing intense episodes of déjà vu. I later ascribed these to my fascination with time travel and being able to move instantly in space or between dimensions in order to pursue my dreams. Here is why I believe that, during my teens, I started experiencing sleep paralysis, though it was only in my late 20s that I found out that this phenomenon could lead to astral travel and the possibility of actually ‘visiting’ the Afterlife and checking on departed loved ones.
I was 14 when Dr. Raymond Moody’s groundbreaking book about near-death experiences, Life after Life, was first published and this opened up for me a whole new world I wished to explore. Reading led to further reading and I was able to fuel my fascination with the idea that our lives are not merely the products of chance, but are part of a bigger plan.
The most exciting experience involving my work was acting as an interpreter for professional mediums in the ‘90s, during the Italian Week organised by the Arthur Findlay College in the UK, and other similar events. This gave me the opportunity to witness hundreds of private sittings, dozens of public demonstrations of mediumship, as well as lectures and workshops about how mediumship works. The sittings did not only provide me with moving evidence about the fact that life continues after death and professional mediums can make communication with our loved ones possible, but also offered me the delightful chance of personally contributing to these get-togethers, in my capacity as a translator.
The Arthur Findlay College in Stansted (UK)
The three most important things I learnt during those years in which I was exposed to constant firsthand evidence provided by professional mediums were:
Not only does life safely continue after death, but our personality is indestructible. Freed from the limitations of physical existence, those who were close to us in this physical life are even closer to us when they leave this world and their love for us increases in an immeasurable way.
Whereas professional mediums are specially gifted and trained to offer this evidence on behalf of third parties, everyone is able to safely stay in touch with their loved ones on the so-called ‘other side’ as we are all made of the same essence – spirit – and we are all connected beyond (that is before and after) our entry in three-dimensional space and linear time. Also the departed find it easier to stay in touch with those they love than with people they never knew.
Firsthand accounts about transition, after-death existence, near-death experiences and death-bed visions hugely expand our chances of connecting with our loved ones: this happens because beliefs and expectations play a key role in determining what is possible for us, as also quantum physics has at last been able to prove.
I felt an urgency to share these powerful understandings, so I wrote The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand. This book focuses on three different approaches to staying in touch – while awake, while falling asleep and while asleep. However, before tackling techniques, it addresses some very straightforward questions and doubts readers may have about what happens at the time of physical death: where we go, what we do, what sort of existence we have and how we relate to our incarnate loved ones. This information is drawn from firsthand accounts mainly coming from three different sources:
My own personal experiences during meditation, while falling asleep or waking up, lucid or ordinary dreaming and astral travel.
Mediumistic accounts about transition and life after death.
Near-death experiences and deathbed visions.
I have found that (especially at times of deep grief, when our whole system can be shocked out of its everyday balance and patience with ourselves is of paramount importance) reading firsthand accounts about the Afterlife can work as a powerful reminder that after-death communication is just as natural as any other form of communication.
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
Ever since I was a young girl, I have always been fascinated by life’s great mysteries, especially death and the afterlife. I started reading about near-death experiences when I was a teenager. When I was 9 years old, I began experiencing strange phenomena, including sleep paralysis. At the time, these felt confusing and frightening, so I tried my best to avoid them. Eventually, when I grew up, I learnt how sleep paralysis could lead to astral travel.
When I was 27, something happened that shook up my life completely. My grandmother passed away. Her death was a great shock for me and it brought up deeply troubling thoughts and emotions. For the next 5 years, I had frequent nightmares about her. My mind was in pain. I simply could not believe my grandmother no longer existed. But if she was still alive somewhere, I had no idea where that might be, or what she might look like. This event made me question the whole concept of physical death, but there was no one near me who could answer my questions. Growing up in Italy, we were discouraged from thinking too much about what happens after death. Moreover, we were taught that trying to communicate with those who have passed on was considered morbid – or even sinful.
Then in 1993, I visited the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, based in London. There, thanks to a very good medium I met, I broke through my mental prison, and realised that my grandma was not dead, but still very much alive. At first, it was almost inconceivable, and my own mental filters prevented me from seeing her clearly. But as I gradually let go of my preconceptions, I had vivid contact not only with my grandmother, but with many others who had left this world.
As soon as I made this breakthrough, all my nightmares ended and I also realised that I could use astral travel for specific purposes. I grew bold, and my mind opened to a new world of possibilities. I started studying everything I could find – in Italian and in English. I learnt about the philosophy and mechanics of mediumship.
The following year, I started working as a translator at mediumship training events in the UK and Italy. I attended hundreds of private sittings, as well as dozens of lectures, workshops and public demonstrations of mediumship. I studied with many certified mediums, and did volunteer work in the field of bereavement support. I also teamed up with other afterlife researchers, experimenting with after-death communication and how it works.
Over the years I found out that many people who are interested in the subject of mediumship are, themselves, deeply bereaved. They have lost someone important in their lives, and are full of questions, just like those I had been asking myself. In their hearts, they don’t want to believe their loved ones no longer exist. But in their minds, they want practical evidence of life after death.
Seeing and feeling their pain and frustration, I felt a powerful urge to do something to help answer their questions, so people suffering from loss could find some peace. That’s why I wrote my book, The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand. Three Tried and Tested Methods to Stay in Touch with Those Who Have Gone Before Us.
In this book, I show you how death is not the end of life, but the reawakening from an illusion. I explain how and why it is possible to stay in touch with those on the other side, and how the departed find it easier to stay in touch with those they love than with people they never knew.
Finally, I show how your departed loved ones are closer to you NOW than they have ever been, and how they are only too willing to reassure you, watch over you and guide you.
The book teaches three different approaches to being in touch with our departed loved ones:
while we are awake,
while we are falling asleep,
and while we are asleep.
‘Being in touch’ means different things to different people. Some might physically see or hear those on the other side. But your unique way of ‘being in touch’ could be a flash in your mind’s eye, a fleeting thought, or an intuitive feeling. Or it could simply mean knowing your loved ones are always with you. This book will give you the spiritual understanding and practical skills to find your own individual way of gently and lovingly reconnecting with those you thought you had lost.
What’s more, these skills will help you deepen your connection with living loved ones. After all, we are all made of the same essence (spirit) and there really is no difference between the living and the dead.
I launched this book in Italian in March 2014. An updated version was issued in 2016. The English version will be made available on 5 June 2017.
This will not be a plain translation of the book I published three years ago, as it will include additional thoughts on the topic and has in fact been re-written for English-speaking readers.
But the synopsis has not changed, and this is what the book is about.
THE AFTERLIFE: Hereafter and Here at Hand
Three tried and tested methods to stay in touch with those who have gone before us
Is mediumship a rare talent or does each of us have the potential to stay in touch with loved ones who have crossed over before us? According to the author, who has attended several courses held by professional mediums and is an expert astral traveller herself, we all have the potential to maintain links that might appear to be broken as a result of the death of our physical body. This book contains plenty of evidence to support the idea that, irrespective of death, we are always in touch, even though we might not realise.
A clear difference exists between trained professional mediums and what this book is about, and this is something the author makes absolutely clear from the beginning, having had the honour of working closely with a number of them as a translator and of finding out how many studies and how much effort and daily dedication a professional medium needs to devote to his/her work.
Before presenting methods for pursuing the goal of staying in touch with our loved ones on the so-called “other side”, this book looks closely at the themes of transition, death and life after death, drawing on evidence provided by mediumistic accounts and the fascinating discoveries made by those who have glimpsed beyond the threshold during Near-Death Experiences.
Thanks to her personal meetings with deceased family members and friends, through dreams, lucid dreams, astral travel, as well as other mystical experiences, the author offers her own conclusions on the Spirit World. She suggests that the spiritual plane constantly interacts with the physical, and is, in fact, both emanation and essence of it, despite our unfortunate tendency in everyday life to consider the two dimensions as separate compartments.
Based on this, we discover that our loved ones find it much easier to stay in touch with those they have been close to on this physical plane, are closer to us than ever and only too willing to reassure us, watch over us and guide us.
Aside from the techniques themselves, which are within everyone’s grasp, the book is a great source of comfort, not only for those who have suffered a loss but also for anyone who, as a human being, has questions or doubts about this subject, which regrettably, many still consider a great taboo.
Today, 2 November, is what we call All Souls’ Day and in Italy cemeteries are full of people, often travelling from distant places to pay homage to their dear departed by visiting their grave. This is one of those days in which those who have lost a loved one to physical death feel especially close to them, especially if they have been brought up to believe that what happens after death is none of our business.
So I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to share with you what I feel are the three basic steps a person grieving the loss of a loved one might find helpful to take in order to make it easier to gently reconnect with those they feel they have lost, assuming this is what they wish and feel comfortable about.
Based on my own personal experience, the biggest hindrance when we are deeply in grief is grief itself: we might find it difficult to concentrate, we might have mixed feelings ranging from pain to anger to disbelief, we might feel confused about what we were taught about the afterlife, assuming we were brought up within a religion or philosophy that contemplates the idea that life continues after death… In other words, we might actually question the whole issue of whether an Afterlife exists.
If you are a person who is grieving the loss of a loved one and would like to find a way to gently reconnect with the person you are so much missing, we also need to take into account that at this particular time you might be subconsciously fearing the idea of facing your own mortality or even subconsciously fearing that, if you investigate the topic thoroughly, you might not find enough evidence to prove that life continues after death. You may be fearing annihilation, you may be fearing that, because you do not hear from your loved ones and do not dream about them and do not feel them close to you, they might no longer exist, they might have lost their personal identity, they might have reincarnated into somebody else or they shouldn’t be disturbed.
So, if you are feeling confused at this time and would like to know more about the topic, I would like to share with you 3 tips which might ease the situation and more specifically make it easier for you to realise that death is not the end, that death is, in fact, a reawakening from an illusion, and that when we die we feel more alive than we have ever felt during this physical life and even closer than we ever did to those who were dear to us.
In other words, this blog post is dedicated to you, assuming you feel comfortable about the subject and somehow sense that spirit contact IS a possibility.
Step #1: Read first-hand accounts about how gentle death is and what the spirit world is like
Now, I believe I have spent my whole life implementing step one. First of all, I have read many, many accounts of near-death experiences, especially since 1975 when Dr Moody published his famous book Life After Life. These accounts are shared by people who, for one reason or another, have been clinically dead for a short period, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes. There are many resources where you can find accounts about after-death experiences and some of them are listed here: http://www.near-death.com/, http://iands.org/ndes/about-ndes.html; http://www.nderf.org/.
Another source of written accounts about transition and death comes from mediums, especially deep-trance mediums, who, through automatic writing or other means, have tried to accurately report what deceased communicators explain about death and what happens when we die.
My third source of evidence comes from my 25-year experience as astral traveler: I have shared a number of accounts (on various message boards, in articles and books) about how the process of dying was explained to me, not only during out-of-body experiences (which I realise are not easy to achieve), but also in dreams and lucid dreams (that is dreams in which we are aware that we are dreaming).
In the beginning, reading these accounts felt a bit confusing, because they clashed with the fact that I had been brought up with the idea that we are not supposed to question what happens after death. Yet, for some reason, I have always been attracted by the idea of investigating the subject and, to my surprise, I found that all these accounts had many facts in common: for instance and most importantly, they all suggested that (if death comes when it is supposed to come, that is when it is not self-inflicted) it is such a gentle process that one might actually find it difficult to realise that it has happened, or to detect ‘when’ it happened exactly; the other fact I found is that, besides being a gentle process, it is also a very peaceful experience, during which one is never alone, feels constantly safe and looked after, feels a blissful sense of love and belonging as if one were at last back Home and, last but not least, one is joyfully met by relatives and loved ones who have passed on before.
Even though it may feel troubling to have one’s preconceived ideas, or lack of ideas, challenged, this step is very important, because it gradually gives you the opportunity to put yourself in your loved one’s shoes and realise that the most important thing they wish to communicate may be as trivial as ‘I’m alive!’, ‘I’m safe!’, ‘I’m well!’, I’m healed!’. I realise that most sceptics would find it ridiculous to base the belief that life continues after death on a message such as one of those I have mentioned, yet, let’s face it: if we were to die and knew that there were people in pain here trapped in the physical dimensional wondering about what happened to us and had the chance to communicate with them… what would our message be?
So, even if it takes time to go through these accounts, even if it requires a lot of patience on your side and perseverance too, at a time when you find it difficult to focus and concentrate, I highly recommend you implement this step.
As I mentioned, the key insight I can offer about the importance of implementing this step is the fact that it will enable you to put yourself in the shoes of those you wish to hear from.
Step #2: Realise that the key message at the core of all religions and near-death-experience accounts is LOVE
Now, this second step may sound very basic and elementary, yet it is crucial. In this physical dimension, it is difficult to realise that, at a spiritual level, we are not separate and that LOVE is what really makes the difference. Those who have reported a near-death experience very often point out that this is the key fact they learn about and then implement when they come back to life: this means that harming somebody else deliberately is the same as harming ourselves; it means that gossiping about other people is the same as having other people gossiping about us (just another way of harming ourselves); it means that feelings of anger, aggressiveness, envy, competition, jealousy, scarcity and any other form of negativity about other people will separate us not only from the rest of the living but also from our loved ones on the other side.
Another important fact about this second step is that LOVE is the Golden Rule at the core of any religion. If religions or religious beliefs lead to separation, conflict or war, this means that they are forgetting the core divine wisdom which is at their source. Separation and competition are man-made concepts. So, once again, if we want to put ourselves in our loved ones’ shoes and get a chance to communicate with them or hear from them, it is important that we understand this key fact: that we are all bound together (the living and the so-called ‘dead’) by LOVE and we are all made of the same essence, spirit.
Why is this step important? Because, if we realise that we are all made of the same essence (spirit) and realise that separation is an illusion, it becomes natural for us to tune into the spirit dimension our loved ones are communicating from.
The top tip I can provide for this step is an exercise whereby we pretend that we already know that we are all one and that harming in any way another person is the same as harming ourselves
There are plenty of resources online about the Golden Rule. Here is just one of the many links that will provide evidence about the fact that the key message at the core of all religions is LOVE: https://kidworldcitizen.org/world-religions-golden-rule-across-cultures/. No wonder so many near-death-experiencers come back with the knowing that all religions are equally precious.
Step #3: Believe and know that, once you understand these very basic notions about the importance of LOVE and the fact that death is a reawakening from a temporary illusion, you can awaken on this physical plane and realise our loved ones are always with us
Here comes the third step, which can only be implemented after the other two: getting to believe, finding it natural to believe that, once we understand this very basic notion that LOVE is at the core of all world religions and at the core of near-death experience accounts, we realise it is also at the core of our higher and wiser understanding that we are all made of the same essence.
This step is important because there is plenty of evidence that, if we expect something to be true, it becomes much easier for us to accomplish what it is we want to achieve. I started by using the word believing, as I typed out the heading for this step, but believing is also used as a synonym for hoping: the meaning I really wish to convey is knowing. So, when we reach the point where we know these basic things to be true, it becomes automatic for us to be able to implement the practical techniques required to understand after-death communication and the fact that it’s much easier for our loved ones to connect with those they love rather than with somebody they never knew.
The key insight involved by expecting something, knowing something, rather than simply hoping for it to happen, is that, when we reach that point, it is statistically proved that amazing things can become possible. As some of my readers know, I have been blessed with the opportunity of spontaneously, and then deliberately, experiencing about a thousand of out-of-body experiences over the last 25 years, which then led to other forms of after-death communication that can be taught and learnt: so it is easy for me to state that we can connect with our loved ones in several different ways because I know it to be true.
Nonetheless, I cannot stress enough how important it is to realise that deep grief is a hindrance in our case and that even experienced, professional, certified mediums can find it difficult to connect with their loved ones when they have recently suffered a loss. So PATIENCE is of paramount importance.
Now that I have shared these three tips with you, if you feel comfortable about step 1, 2 and 3, I’d like to offer you a gift, and that is a promotional code to obtain my book The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand at Smashwords for $ 0.99. This amount will simply cover the costs involved in making the e-book available at Smashwords and the code will be valid until 21 November.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique found in her books or articles as a form of treatment for medical problems. The intent of the author is only to help readers in their quest for physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. For medical advice, readers are invited to seek professional help.
I often hear people complain that astral travel sounds so delightful and that I make it sound so easy, whereas in fact it is not. I thought I would use this post to quote from my book The Afterlife: Hereafter and Here at Hand to explain why I feel that learning to lucid dream is so much easier to achieve and is definitely my favourite method when it comes to reaching out for departed loved ones in spirit.
‘Most out-of-body experiences occur when the mind becomes conscious, either spontaneously or deliberately, while the body remains asleep.
For me, this phenomenon began spontaneously in my teens, at least 15 years before I fully understood what it meant. I would be asleep, when my mind would suddenly wake up and I could not control my physical body. This happened whenever I stayed up late studying, or if I fell asleep exhausted for an hour or so in the afternoon – in other words, when my body was particularly tired, but my mind was still alert or overstimulated.
Like me, many students and athletes have reported the experience of ‘waking up’ in a paralysed body; or of being unable to open their eyelids, while hearing a buzzing sound or feeling a strong vibration in their heads; or of trying to shout out, but being incapable of uttering the merest whisper. Needless to say, it is an unpleasant sensation.
I recently learnt that this apparent anomaly – the early stage of which is known as ‘sleep paralysis’ – is due to the muscles in the body ‘turning off’ during REM sleep. If we did not experience this ‘atony’, or functional paralysis of the muscles, our bodies would physically react to whatever we do or see in our dreams, which could be dangerous for us.
Thus, if the mind is alert, while the body is still asleep, you may experience the unpleasant sensation of being prisoner to your paralysed body. This is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety, fear or terror. However, objectively speaking, it is usually a brief experience.
As a teenager, having ruled out the possibility of any serious illness and resigning myself to these episodes, I devised a way out of the situation, by waking my body. I would imagine myself doing something that required intense concentration, such as two completely different movements with my hands – for instance, making a circle with one, while moving the other up and down – and this would be enough to wake my body.
These episodes of nocturnal paralysis continued for many years, until I discovered they were really a doorway to another world.
I was 29 and under a great deal of stress. I had recently been promoted and moved to the Milan branch of the company I worked for, but I had not found a place to rent, so I was still living in a hotel after four long months. One night, around midnight, I grew drowsy, when I felt the familiar sensation of heaviness in my limbs and the buzzing sound in my head. Only, this time, instead of struggling against my paralysed body, I was amazed to find that my hands and arms were ‘flying away’, detached from my real arms.
In shock, I instinctively pulled them down and woke up completely, physically as well as mentally. What had happened? Had I gone mad?
I had previously read that when the mind is awake in a sleeping body – a state referred to as ‘mind awake, body asleep’ – our consciousness is free to leave the body and move on other planes, in other dimensions. Those who are familiar with this subject generally talk of the ‘astral plane’, on which we move with this second, more subtle body, similarly called the ‘astral body’.
With this in mind, I soon realised that my physical limbs must have been paralysed as usual, and my consciousness (which had stayed awake and lucid enough to record the episode) had witnessed my ‘other arms’ flying away, i.e. the arms belonging to my astral body.
According to researchers, everyone and everything exists both in the physical and the astral dimensions. The astral aspect of the self is somewhat independent of the physical aspect. It changes and moves very fluidly and with great ease according to our thoughts, and sometimes ‘operates’ autonomously even when we are awake. For example, on more than one occasion, during a boring conference that made me feel drowsy, I have seen the astral forms of certain members of the audience move, turn, look around, look at the people next to them, while their physical counterparts sat practically still, listening to the speaker. Sometimes, while on the verge of sleep, I have seen my husband wander around the house, doing odd jobs, while his physical counterpart was tens of miles away.
This is what is called the ‘astral body’. It is a body that is not bound by the laws of space and time, is free to do the things that we only daydream about and, during an out-of-body experience, is as solid and tangible as a discarnate spirit, enabling us to touch and speak to our loved ones in the Afterlife.
Later in life I discovered that, when the physical body was asleep and the mind was awake, I could walk or fly with my astral body in the astral version of my bedroom or of the rest of the house. I could fly about the neighbourhood, reach distant places in no time and meet other people who were awake or asleep, wandering about in their astral bodies. I could even temporarily ‘cross over’, meet the deceased and visit where they reside. I have also seen special reception areas designed for such meetings with the deceased, and have found that it is possible to move in time and meet future or past versions of my loved ones.
In those early weeks and months following my first experience on the astral plane, I discovered that, when the mind wakes up and the body is still asleep, the body is no longer a barrier; it is no longer solid, but yielding and porous, composed of an energy that could easily be passed through. Not only was I able to leave that body, but I could push my astral hands through it. Likewise, I could sink through the mattress or pass through walls, sometimes feeling a faint vibration or tingle. I could float up to the ceiling like a balloon, or drift down to within a few inches of the floor.
I could also look at myself in the mirror and see my astral body reflected back at me. This soon became a habit I have continued to this day. Since the idea of looking at my body asleep in bed repulsed me – even though I had no issue with touching it, and even enjoyed listening to the rhythmic sound of my breathing – I found that looking at my astral body in the mirror was a daunting task. Furthermore, over the years, I have discovered that it gives me a much more accurate idea of my deeper emotional state than my physical body reveals.
For example, during the period of these early experiments with astral travel, I was a rather solitary person. I lived about 25 miles from my workplace and had no friends in town. I also had trouble adjusting to my move from Piedmont; so, despite being happy with my work, I was not quite what you would call a happy person.
The first few times I faced my astral body in the mirror, I was surprised to see that, while my physical body appeared attractive and well-presented, my hair swept up and my face framed with a different pair of earrings each day, my astral body looked emaciated, bruised and covered in plasters; my hair was dishevelled (once, I even wore curlers) and my clothes were always drab or tatty. Luckily, I have long been intuitive, so I did not let these images drag down my self-esteem. Instead, I immediately realised they were projections of my sad and lonely emotional self.
Over the years, I have seen myself many times in the mirror during my out-of-body experiences. After having a child and forming a family, I watched my astral body grow younger, more beautiful and more cheerful.
A more recent example of the images I have seen in astral mirrors occurred during a period of serious illness, after I underwent months of treatment that temporarily made my hair fall out. The mirror I looked in was in a more spacious, better-lit place than my physical house, in a room specifically designed for rest and physical recovery. The image reflected back at me was that of a beautiful woman, at least ten years younger than I, with long flowing hair. Oddly, her eyes were covered in a red veneer of fear. As I gazed at her face, I realised how crucial it was to overcome my fear and be confident about the future, if I were to get better. Months later, the results of my CT scan and full medical check-up finally put my mind at ease. When I next saw myself in the mirror on the astral plane, my reflection now had two enormous green eyes bearing no traces of fear.
I would like to stress that, in addition to reflecting my own image, as well as the images of any entities around me, over the years I have found mirrors to be extremely efficient portals, taking me quickly from the astral plane to whatever ‘place’ I wish to go to, especially if it is to meet a particular person, whether alive or dead.
For example, during an out-of-body experience in January 2009 (two years prior to the therapy that made my hair fall out), I asked to meet Master Jesus, for whom I have always had a special fondness, particularly for his love of children. I was in a colourful, beautifully scented pine grove, but at the same time – and this was particularly odd – I could see a starry sky, as if it were nighttime. Jesus was teaching in a kind of institute, but he came outside specially to meet me. He had his traditional beard and long hair, but wore modern casual clothes: jeans and a shirt with the sleeves turned up at the cuffs. Looking into my eyes, he transmitted a thought to me that came from Scripture, which would later turn out to be extremely significant: he told me he knew the number of hairs I had on my head!
To return to the night in the autumn of 1990 when my arms ‘flew away’, from that moment on, I began to read everything I could lay my hands on about astral travel. At the time, I did not have the Internet and I could not really bring up the subject with my normal circle of acquaintances without seeming ‘weird’. The first book I devoured was Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe. Numerous others followed. I read and I practised. As I was single, I could give free rein to my imagination. I spent Saturdays and Sundays alone in my flat, with the phone unplugged and the doorbell silenced, so I could explore.
Since I kept a diary of my dreams and my OBEs, I discovered an experience that is very common and quite similar to astral travel. During a dream, the dreamer is aware of dreaming and, to a certain extent, able to control what is happening. ‘Lucid dreaming’, as it is known, is where we are aware of dreaming: we are conscious, but still partly in the dream state. Therefore, even the strangest or unlikeliest of things may continue to seem normal.
There are various degrees of lucidity during a lucid dream, which can be intentionally heightened to achieve an OBE. However, in an actual OBE, the mind is fully awake, albeit our priorities may be slightly different from when we are in a waking state, because our perspective is broader. The separation we experience in this dimension gives us the clear perception that we are moving in a body similar to the physical body, yet different and not subject to the laws of the physical world.
These unique and moving experiences have continued, both spontaneously and intentionally, for the last 26 years. Time, experience and my reading and thinking on this subject have made me realise that the ‘places’ I visit during my astral projections are not so much ‘outside’ of my physical body, as the name might suggest, but are inner dimensions of my consciousness and spirit. This, however, remains a subject for further debate, since the concepts of ‘in’ and ‘out’ do not hold the same importance beyond the physical plane.
In other words, everything we see and touch while awake and in our ordinary state of consciousness has an internal and an external aspect here on the physical plane; but beyond this dimension, the concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ cease to be important. Hence, any discussion of whether the astral plane is ‘outside’ the physical dimension—as if it were some kind of energy screen surrounding us—or ‘inside’ it—as if it were the outermost part of the spiritual nucleus that is our very essence—is purely theoretical and perhaps irrelevant.
William Buhlman, one of America’s leading experts on OBEs, has defined astral projection as an inward journey. For my part, this particular interpretation has released me from a number of fears, the first of these being the fear of staying ‘locked out’ of my body or seeing the silver cord between the astral body and the physical body break while I was still outside my physical vehicle.
Regardless of such speculations, the fact remains that, although I spent the first years of my explorations focusing on the closest plane to the physical dimension, it did not take long for the desire to visit my loved ones in the Afterlife to take over.
… I would like to emphasise one last time my opinion that astral travel is nothing more than a state of greater lucidity than a lucid dream, in which we are aware that we are dreaming. I would also like to emphasise that lucid dreaming can, if we so desire, be the launch pad to astral travel: if we are aware that we are dreaming and conscious of what is happening, we can choose to heighten our lucidity and move into an actual OBE.
Although it may seem superfluous at this stage, I would like to underline my total disagreement with scholars, practitioners and teachers of lucid dreaming like Charlie Morley who consider 99% of the entities met during a lucid dream to be dream characters (or DCs) —in other words, mere products of the dreaming mind. Although I agree with the broader concept that this life is like a dream from which we wake up and return to our wider reality when we die, I do not find this a valid reason to negate the absolute authenticity and individuality of the incarnate or discarnate spirits we might encounter in the waking state or in other modified states of consciousness such as dreams or OBEs.’
The reason I do not usually encourage people to learn to astral travel is because, in out-of-body experiences, our mind is wide awake, and all our logical and rational filters are in place, whereas with lucid dreaming, the mind is somewhat ‘sedated’ and able to accept insights and ideas that may not make sense when awake but be full of meaning when we are asleep.
The reason I often refer to my out-of-body experiences when teaching how to reach out for our loved ones in the Afterlife is simply in order to provide practical evidence to back up the experiences that are within everyone’s grasp, through dreams, lucid dreams and meditation.
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As suggested in the article devoted to unlocking our dream memories, our deceased loved ones are not living somewhere up in the clouds. They are much closer than that, only a thought away: it is as if they were living in the room next door and the door is never locked. However, when we speak about the room next door we are just using a metaphor, as the spirit world is not bound by our physical notions of three-dimensional space and linear time.
Being free from linear time means that, when we die, our greatest desire is to reassure our loved ones that we are safe, healed, happy and above all alive, but this is not a pressing need as it would be, for instance, if we had escaped a disaster in a foreign country and did not have the means to let our family know we are OK. It is not the same as many near-death experiencers report the moment they are pronounced dead and suddenly realise that, even though they are feeling perfectly well, they are invisible to relatives and friends who keep focusing on their dead body. Once we realise we are truly dead we also find out that time is not an issue and we will be back with our loved ones in the blink of an eye.
Being free from the notion of three-dimensional space means that there are no distances, walls, fences or doors that can separate us in the spirit world: indeed on a number of occasions, during out-of-body experiences or dreams, I have met deceased relatives or friends in non-existent extra-rooms placed next to the one I was in, or in non-existent extra flats located on the same floor as the one we live in. This means that the non-physical plane can manifest in the form or extra rooms or buildings we are not usually aware of while awake on the physical plane.
This metaphor is also used by William Thomas Stead (1849–1912), an English newspaper editor, influential writer and medium who was among the victims of the Titanic disaster. Stead communicated many times after his death, notably in a number of sessions in which he described his death at sea and the nature of the Afterlife through the medium Pardoe Woodman, via automatic writing. These communications formed part of a book, The Blue Island: Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1922). In his account, Stead says, ‘Death is only the doorway from one room to another, and both rooms are very similarly furnished and arranged.’
In fact, the room-next-door-metaphor is simply designed to help our earthly minds to figure out the complex notions we have just described and understand how we can practically coexist with our departed loved ones on the spirit plane, a plane we are all part of, incarnates and discarnates.
On the other hand, R. Craig Hogan, Ph.D., who is president of the Afterlife Research and Education Institute, Inc., and of the Center for Spiritual Understanding, Inc., devoted to helping people develop their spiritual understanding through Afterlife connections, remarks, ‘Receiving communications from those on the next planes of life isnot like hearing someone speak to you from another room. When someone on this plane speaks to you, you receive the messages involuntarily; you can’t escape hearing the voice. In these efforts to have Afterlife connections, the messages are subliminal, and won’t be in audible voices at all. They will be in thoughts, impressions, feelings, and subtle knowing. You won’t receive them until you bring yourself into a state of mind in which you can let them into your consciousness.’
R. Craig Hogan, Ph.D. is the author of Your Eternal Self (Greater Reality Publications, 2008), presenting the scientific evidence that the mind is not confined to the brain, the Afterlife is a reality, people’s minds are linked, and the mind affects the physical world. The Afterlife Research and Education Institute offers an online self-guided Afterlife connection training programme (http://www.selfguided.spiritualunderstanding.org/) designed to teach and train people how to obtain after-death communication without the aid of a medium, as well as connecting with people still in bodies unable to communicate. As the programme presentation says, ‘you will establish a new relationship or enhance an existing relationship with your loved one living in the realm next door.’
Something I found very helpful about this programme is the way it presents the mechanics of spirit contact, by using another example that efficiently explains how important it is to be aware of what it is we are seeking and also available to tune into the subtler planes of existence in order to hear from our deceased loved ones.
‘To understand what it’s like for them to try to communicate to you, try this little experiment. We know from the research done by Rupert Sheldrake and others that people do have a sense of being stared at. People subtly know when someone is looking at them. The next time you’re in a line of people waiting for something, pick someone close to you, ahead of you in line, who is not preoccupied and not next in line to get to the clerk. They’re just standing idly. Focus on their neck and imagine tickling them on the neck. After a few seconds, some people will turn around and look back, and even brush their necks. They don’t know why, though. The message came through to their minds at a very subtle or subconscious level, but they don’t get the clear message that you’re imagining tickling their necks. They won’t turn around and say, “Why are you imagining tickling my neck?” The message is there, because they respond to it, but it doesn’t rise to the level of their conscious awareness.
That’s what it’s like for your loved one trying to communicate with you. They can communicate through thoughts, mind to mind. They do focus on your mind and try to get a message through, but the subtle messages don’t rise to the level that we can become conscious of them. We’re just too preoccupied with life to quiet ourselves and let the thought message come up from the subconscious into our conscious mind.
At times, you’ll suddenly have a memory, perhaps something you hadn’t thought of for years. That’s your mind connecting with their mind. They’re thinking of that memory, or they’re focusing on you and sending that memory to you. Thank them for it and let the love you feel pour over you. It’s them communicating mind to mind.’
I find this example absolutely brilliant! It explains very well how frustrating it might feel, if our loved ones were not living out of our linear time, to try and connect with us when we are awake and focused on our everyday life. Mind-to-mind communication also happens between physically alive people, of course, between people whose bodies are able to communicate. However our loved ones in spirit have an advantage: they have none of our worries, physical restrictions or conditions, they are young, healthy and pain-free. Their disadvantage, on the other hand, could be having to do with our disbelief, our lack of expectation, a deep sense of grief and loss and, above all, few topics to share that we may comprehend with all our mental filters and scarcity- or fear-based daily concerns, which are so typical on this plane of existence.
Thousands of near-death experiencers have found how little our language can help to describe the blissful mystical knowings they are made aware of while temporarily dead. This means that, in most cases, all our loved ones can hope to share with us is the notion that they are safe, alive and watching over us, advice and guidance about how to handle our daily challenges and a sense of protection at difficult times. The good news is that this is all most of us would really hope to get from after-death communication. So let us try and step into our departed loved ones’ shoes and imagine how it feels to try and convey such messages to us while we are engaged in our daily activities. They focus on us conveying their love and reassurance, just like a person standing in a line of people and staring at somebody else, and all they obtain in response to this, most times, is triggering a memory that will possibly cause us to feel nostalgic. Let us just stop and think about it and of any past experiences in which this might have happened to us and we discarded the thought as a memory or fantasy.
For instance, you might have been shopping at a supermarket, wondering whether to bake a new cake because you have never felt good at cooking, and you suddenly hear the speaker on the radio suggest it is time to try out a new recipe which is sure to prove as delicious as grandma’s cake used to be. Is this a coincidence?
In my case, it has happened more than once that I was feeling down because I was desperately missing my grandmother, who used to be so sweet and caring, whereas now I felt lonely and unable to handle the idea of having to shoulder too many responsibilities… She was the only one who used to make me feel absolutely special… And, as I was parking my car in the street or driving along, I happened to notice that the car right in front of mine displayed the name in italics “Giulietta”, which was the nickname she always used for me as a child. Was this a coincidence?
An even more significant form of spirit contact is the case in which you may suddenly remember something you had not thought about for years, a happy memory connected to somebody very dear to you who has passed on. That old incident might have come to mind out of the blue and you realised you had not thought of it for a long, long time: this may actually be a mind-to-mind contact by that person who is thinking of you and of that special time.
These are all special opportunities to become aware that after-death communication does happen even when we are not expecting it. Can you imagine how it may feel for our loved ones on the other side if, instead of acknowledging the thoughts and feelings they are trying to convey, we simply shrug them off as a sign of weakness on our side, or as a pleasant memory of a time that is lost forever?
Once we are convinced that spirit contact is absolutely natural and only requires to be acknowledged with a sense of gratitude, we can consciously start thinking of ways of seeking guidance from our loved ones in a quiet meditative state. If they are so clever at getting through to us when we are busy with our daily multitasking, how more effective will the process be if we actively create the best conditions for it to take place?
For those who feel like trying the online self-guided Afterlife connection training programme (http://www.selfguided.spiritualunderstanding.org/), which is also available with the aid of binaural beats, I recommend you carefully read through the conditions you must evaluate before going through the procedure.
Over the years, I have heard several people complain that they “never dream” or that they find it really difficult to remember any dreams when they wake up in the morning. This is a pity! Not remembering dreams denies people one of the most frequent opportunities to hear from their departed loved ones, since it is when we are disconnected from the stimuli of our physical lives that we are most open to after death communication. On the other hand, it is quite natural for other people to remember their dreams. The luckiest seem to be those who get a chance to meet their loved ones in lucid dreams, that is in dreams when we are aware that we are dreaming. During a lucid dream, it is possible to consciously interact with the dream landscape and with our departed loved ones who might be visiting at the time.
So I decided it might be a good idea to write a post, based on my own personal experience, to provide some practical advice that may help those who appear to be struggling to remember their dreams and take advantage of this wonderful opening to connect with their inner selves and with the Afterlife, the amazing world that lies beyond this world.
First of all, I feel that it is very important to realise that everyone dreams: if we could not dream, we would probably die. Even though science has taken an interest in researching dreams only recently, with the birth of psychoanalysis, the invention of instruments that may detect and measure dream parameters (such as the electroencephalograph, which was first used in 1924) and the observation of Rapid Eye Movements occurring during REM sleep and related sleep cycles, I believe there is no question about the fact that humans have always wondered about the meaning that dreams carry and ascribed to them mysterious powers related to contacting the Divine or supernatural and/or non-physical entities.
I feel it is also worthwhile considering that we spend almost one-third of our physical lives sleeping, disconnected from most of our physical stimuli, in order to rest, heal, reset our vital functions, process our daily life experiences and any related hopes, fears and expectations, creating our future and much more. One-third of our physical lives represents a really large amount of time which, if better invested, might really offer us a lot of happiness.
Step 1 – If necessary, research the subject, acknowledge and become convinced that we all dream, even if we do not remember
With the exception of occasional or regular naps we may take during the day – when we are not as exhausted as we would be at the end of the day – the first dreams we have after falling asleep are usually brief and, practically speaking, more difficult to remember if we have just started training. It is much easier to work with the last dreams we have towards dawn. Indeed, the longest and most interesting dream tends to be the last one we have before waking up, when we have already rested for several hours and had a chance to process any concerns with our earlier dreams. This is even truer if we get a chance to sleep an extra hour and have no pressing engagements causing us to leap out of bed.
Even if we are sure that we are unable to remember our dreams, the important thing now is to set up a daily strategy aimed at regularly keeping track of any fleeting insights transpiring from a night’s sleep, even if we do not yet realise that this is possible.
All we need to devote to this programme is 1 or 2 minutes a day, as long as we commit to carry out this task regularly and in line with the rules we will have set for ourselves.
As with all new habits we try to form, this need not be an easy task to start with, despite the little time and effort it requires. In the beginning, it may actually feel like we are stepping out of our comfort zone, but do not worry: your efforts will be soon rewarded.
Step 2 – Commit to devote 1 or 2 minutes a day to your project, patiently and with perseverance
For the purpose of recording any dream-related memories, I recommend you use a tool you like, that is attractive and inviting, something that is a pleasure to use. For instance, I have always loved organisers for some reason, but somebody else may choose a notebook, a loose-leaf exercise book, a luxury writing pad, one’s mobile, tablet or iPad, or a voice recorder. I have a friend who is a professional painter and loves to create her own journals and notebooks, by using recycled paper, coloured cardboard and ribbons, which she personally decorates depending on the use they are meant for.
Step 3 – Choose a dream-catching tool that you like and find inviting
Once you have selected your recording tool, it is time to take action. We may choose to place our data gathering/processing tool in a strategic position that is within reach, together with a pen, pencil, or hi-tech pencil – if necessary – and get into the habit of writing down or recording every day something we might remember or simply have on our mind upon waking up. In the beginning, you may simply enter a few words to describe the mood you were in upon waking up, the feeling you had, a word or sentence you might have had in mind, a melody, a scent… anything you suspect you might have been even only vaguely aware of just before waking up. Recent studies have provided evidence that, during our sleep, our perception of time changes dramatically and a single instant may turn out to be the source of an amazing amount of memories.
Every single detail deserves to be reported in our case, so it is important not to neglect anything. The important thing at this stage is to realise how important this brief daily task is! In practice, what we are doing is training a muscle that is not being used yet and therefore only needs a little amount of daily exercise to gradually get fit for its job. When we join a gym, we know that, thanks to a regular commitment, we will eventually obtain our desired results. In this case, we are creating the same type of positive expectation, knowing for sure that the muscle we are exercising will become fit and healthy, and require increasingly less effort to work. Every memory you have upon waking up, even the most ephemeral, may in turn trigger another one. As we continue with our daily exercise and bring to light our nighttime experiences, our level of confidence and quickness of mind will increase dramatically. We will be excited to find out that certain dreams are in fact connected and possibly recurring, just waiting for us to become aware of them and lead to the next.
Step 4 – Take action
Now that we know that all we need to do is train and build a muscle with just 1 or 2 minutes of exercise a day, we will find it much easier to simply expect to remember our dreams and free these memories from the place in which they have been secluded all along. The positive expectation and confidence that will build up, in turn, will bring to the surface wonderfully vivid experiences, including unexpected meetings with our departed loved ones who find in dreams the easiest way to stay in touch with us. All we need to do, at this stage, is consolidate our routine, by creating, if we so desire, some kind of ritual that may strengthen our motivation, perseverance and dedication.
In my case, for instance, I love to wake up with a stimulating and fragrant cup of coffee, as I enjoy the blissful quietness I am entitled to as a natural early waker. However, there are countless factors that can make this time of your day unique and motivating, so that you may more easily focus on recollecting what you were experiencing a moment before waking up.
Step 5 – Create a routine
We will soon find out that, even though in the beginning our memory need not display constant performance levels, if we manage to write down or record at least a few words or insights each day, the volume of information we daily report will gradually start to increase and, depending on the time we wish or can make available for this task, we may reach the point of reporting several long dreams per night.
I would, therefore, like to encourage all those who hope for their departed loved ones to visit in their dreams to identify this muscle we are building as some kind of thread connecting our physical world to the world of disincarnates, two worlds that are only apparently separate. With a minimum daily practice, this thread will soon turn into a door that we can choose to leave open upon waking up, at least for the time required to report our dreams.
Like many other Afterlife researchers, I firmly believe this physical life is in fact just a dream compared to the greater, eternal life our spirit is always aware of. By consciously opening the door that leads into our dream life, we can find out for ourselves that the Afterlife is truly here at hand and that these few minutes of daily training can help us regain awareness about this fact. In other words, it is as if our loved ones were living in the room next door: the door is never locked and is literally flung open every time we dream. It is up to us to train so that it does not snap shut when we wake up and we can bring to light the wonderful awareness that death is an illusion and that we are always together.
The following words were spoken beyond the grave by Julia to her friend Ellen as part of a series of letters, Letters from Julia, channelledby W.T. Stead. Published for the first time by the Borderland magazine between 1893 and 1897, Julia’s letters were subsequently published in a single volume called After Death, Enlarged Edition on Letters from Julia, by Stead’s Publishing House, London, 1914.
While my hand was writing a letter to Ellen I thought, “I wonder if the new life surprised Julia much.” Instantly she wrote –
Yes, I was not prepared for such oneness in the life on both sides. When the soul leaves the body it remains exactly the same as when it was in the body; the soul, which is the only real self, and which uses the mind and the body as its instruments, no longer has the use or the need of the body. But it retains the mind, the knowledge, the experience, the habits of thought, the inclinations; they remain exactly as they were. Only it often happens that the gradual decay of the fleshy envelope to some extent obscures and impairs the real self which is liberated by death. The most extraordinary thing which came to my knowledge when I passed over was the difference between the apparent man and the real self.
It gave quite a new meaning to the warning, “Judge not,” for the real self is built up even more by the use it makes of the mind than by the use it makes of the body…
Thought has much greater reality than you imagine. The day-dreamer is not so idle as you imagine. The influence of his idealizing speculation may not make him work, but it may be felt imperceptibly by more practical minds. And so, in like manner, the man who in his innermost heart gives himself up to evil and unclean thoughts may be generating forces, the evil influences of which stir the passions and ruin the lives it may be of his own children, who possibly never knew that their father had ever had a
thought of sin.
Hence on this side things seem so topsy-turvy. The first are last, the last first…
Then there is another thing that surprised me not a little, and that was or is the discovery of the nothingness of things. I mean by that the entire nothingness of most things which seemed to one on earth the most important of things. For instance, money, rank, worth, merit, station, and all the things we most prize when on earth, are simply nothing. They don’t exist anymore than the mist of yesterday or the weather of last year. They were no doubt influential for a time, but they do not last; they pass as the cloud passes, and are not visible anymore.
I want to ask you if you can help me at all in a matter in which I am much interested. I have long wanted to establish a place where those who have passed over could communicate with the loved ones behind. At present the world is full of spirits longing to speak to those from whom they have been parted, just as I longed to speak to you, but without finding a hand to enable them to write. It is a strange spectacle. On your side, souls full of anguish for bereavement; on this side, souls full of sadness because they cannot communicate with those whom they love. What can be done to bring these sombre, sorrow-laden persons together? To do so requires something which we cannot supply. You must help. But how? It is not impossible. And when it is done death will have lost its sting and the grave its victory. The apostle thought this was done. But the grave has not been so easily defeated, and death keeps its sting. Who can console us for the loss of our beloved? Only those who can show us that they are not lost, but are with us more than ever. Do you not think I have been much more with Ellen since I put off my flesh than I used to be? Why, I dwell with her in a way that before was quite impossible. I was never more with her than I have been since I came to this side. But she would not have known it, nor would you have heard from me at all but for the accident of your meeting.
What is wanted is a bureau of communication between the two sides. Could you not establish some sort of office with one or more trust-worthy mediums ? If only it were to enable the sorrowing on the earth to know, if only for once, that their so-called dead live nearer them than ever before, it would help to dry many a tear and soothe many a sorrow. I think you could count upon the eager co-operation of all on this side.
We on this side are full of joy at the hope of this coming to pass. Imagine how grieved we must be to see so many whom we love, sorrowing without hope, when those for whom they sorrow are trying in vain every means to make them conscious of their presence. And many also are racked with agony, imagining that their loved ones are lost in hell, when in reality they have been found in the all-embracing arms of the love of God. Ellen, dear, do talk of this with Minerva, and see what can be done. It is the most important thing there is to do. For it brings with it the trump of the Archangel, when those that were in their graves shall awake and walk forth once more among men. I was at first astonished to learn how much importance the spirits attach to the communications which they are allowed to have with those on earth. I can, of course, easily understand, because I feel it myself – the craving there is to speak to those whom you loved and whom you love; but it is much more than this. What they tell me on all sides, and especially my dear guides, is that the time is come when there is to be a great awakening among the nations, and that the agency which is to bring this about is the sudden and conclusive demonstration, in every individual case which seeks for it, of the reality of the spirit, of the permanence of the soul, and the immanence of the Divine. I said: “But how can I help?”
She wrote: “You are a good writing medium. If you would allow your hand to be used by the spirit of any on this side whose relatives or friends wished to hear from them, you could depend almost confidently upon the spirit using your hand. At any rate, I could always explain why they could not use your hand.”
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In 1892, William Stead discovered he had the gift of automatic writing and it was then that a discarnate entity claiming to be Julia Ames began to write using Stead’s hand. “Sitting alone with a tranquil mind, I consciously placed my right hand, with the pen held in the ordinary way, at the disposal of Julia, and watched with keen and skeptical interest to see what it would write.” Stead wrote at the time.
Julia Ames was a professional journalist who also edited the The Woman’s Union Signal of Chicago. Ames had passed away during December 1891 and she and Stead had been friends. Her closest friend was a woman named Ellen who Stead also knew. Julia told Stead she wanted to relay her experiences from the ‘other side’ so as to help Ellen understand that death, far from being the end, was an event to be worked toward and that although her body had died ‘she’ hadn’t really died at all. Explaining the process of her death Julia wrote; “I did not feel any pain in “dying;” I felt only a great calm and peace. Then I awoke, and I was standing outside my old body, in the room. There was no one there at first, just myself and just myself. At first I wondered I was so strangely well. Then I saw that I had passed over. She added in another communication, “There is no death… Death is only a sense of deprivation and separation which the so-called living feel – an incident of limitation of ‘life.’ Death only exists for the ‘living,’ not for us.”
The letters were dictated during a period between 1892 and 1893 and during this time Julia asked Stead to set up a ‘Bureau’ — a sort of facility where, with the use of mediums, spiritual communications between the living and the spirit world could take place. Julia expressed great importance in our knowing more about our true reality stating; “you may think it strange that the verification of another life should increase the importance of this. But such is the fact, and you can never understand the importance of your life until you see it from this side. You are never, for one moment, idle from influencing eternity. You may think this a figure of speech.
But it is not. You are, far more really than you imagine, making this world of ours in that world of yours.”
The content of the letters included the law of spiritual growth, the mourning of the ‘dead’, life on the other side, and numerous other subjects she felt those living in the physical should be aware of before passing over.
In1893 Stead launched a publication called Borderland, a quarterly psychic magazine that ran until 1897, in which the “Letters from Julia” were published for the first time. The book containing the letters entitled After Death was published in 1905 and was great success with many copies being sold in the UK and the USA.
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The editor, David Pierce, who with his wife Judy founded the social movement 
