Posted by Roberta Grimes • November 26, 2022 • 45 Comments
Afterlife Research, Understanding Reality
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve been through.
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Glory hallelujah!
Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down.
Oh, yes, Lord!
Sometimes I’m almost to the ground.
Oh, yes, Lord.
– From “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had” in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
By survey, it is estimated that more than eighty percent of the people on earth are still afraid to die. What an appalling statistic. Eighty percent! And the most important reason why that statistic is so devastating may not be readily apparent to you:
For example:
And since everyone on earth shares a single consciousness, whatever affects even the least of us must on some level affect every one of us. The implications of this fact are so extraordinary as to almost beggar the imagination! Individually we are indestructible, but nevertheless we are susceptible while we are on earth to endless attacks of morbid negativity that our modern excellent communications have vastly compounded. I chose decades ago to cut myself off from television, radio, and newspapers altogether, and that does help. I urge you to try it. If an actual war ever does break out, you can be sure that someone will let you know.
The cause of all this vastly increased worldwide negativity is humankind’s heightened fear of death in recent decades. And that is something that we are going to have to address if we want things on earth to ever improve much at all. But why are modern people so much more afraid to die? Let’s first stipulate the fact that there is no reason on earth why death should ever be feared! Life on earth is nothing but a very brief sojourn, and we have so much evidence now of what happens at and after bodily death, and of the fact that we all live forever, that no one should ever be afraid of the minimal transition that we erroneously call death. So, what is making people so much more afraid now?
Your first assumption is bound to be that this is not a new phenomenon. Didn’t people always fear death this way? Well, actually, no. Our frame-verse this week is a song that was sung by a people held in bondage some two hundred years ago and more, who looked toward death as a release from their present state of oppression. And while that may seem surprising to us, it was more usual for people in past centuries to see the next stage of life as an adventure, and not as something to be feared. Think of the ancient Egyptians, for example, who built their whole culture around getting ready for what was coming next. Even very primitive cultures often had folk tales about family reunions in a happy afterlife. So, no, people didn’t always fear death the way people fear death in the twenty-first century. So what has happened of late? Why are modern people so much more afraid to die?
As I have investigated this problem, I have come to think that it has three primary causes:
There may be other reasons, too, why so many more people are so much more afraid of death. But the point is that the shared vibratory level of our human consciousness has sunk to such an alarmingly low level of negativity that the result is manifold negative effects in human cultures worldwide. And our increased fear of death in the twenty-first century is the ultimate cause of every one of these problems!
So, how will having more of us know that we are all immortal beings make a difference?
This is a fascinating phenomenon! I first observed it in myself some forty years ago, and since then I have seen it happen for many other people as well. When I was young, I was terrified of the dark. I was actually afraid of many things. Then as soon as I graduated from college, I began to study the afterlife. My afterlife studies intensified with my discovery of the heyday of afterlife communications through physical and deep-trance mediums that occurred in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. For two years or so in the late seventies I prowled used-book stores and libraries, and I read as many of the accounts of after-death communications produced during that turn of the century heyday as I could lay my hands on. It took me about two years to really get past what I thought of back then as my normal fear of death, and my first-stage liberation from the fear of death first became apparent to me one evening. I was in my office. My husband was watching the news on TV, and our infant children were sleeping. It had grown dark as I was concentrating on writing on my computer. And for the first time in my life, I was sitting there alone in pitch darkness, and I was not afraid. I noticed that. I took quick stock of myself. Was it really true? It was true. Suddenly I didn’t fear the dark at all. It was then that I first understood that vanquishing the fear of dying automatically vanquishes all our other fears as well. And I became frankly giddy with my lack of fear! For a while I even had to be extra cautious, believe it or not, about retraining myself to be careful in situations where caution really is needed. Even as recently as nine months ago, I carelessly walked on glare ice, and I fell and hit my head and broke my wrist.
When you no longer fear death, you no longer fear anything.
If we want to improve the condition of humankind in all respects, there is just one magic bullet that can do it all. We will have to make certain that as many people as possible learn as rapidly as possible the truth about death and the afterlife, so they can altogether vanquish their fear of death. And surprisingly, it seems not to matter much to whom we teach these truths. Since our minds are all part of the single consciousness that continuously manifests this one reality, it has been estimated that for as few as ten percent of the people on earth to altogether lose their fear of death and thereby to significantly raise their consciousness vibrations will begin a benevolent feedback cycle for all of humankind. As few as ten percent! Just as this miasma of negativity has weighed down all of humankind, the difference that those ten percent can make will act to buoy and lift all of humankind. There is no other way that we can make this happen. And all of humankind is in such desperate straits that we ought at least to try it!
Of course, the lame and entirely counterproductive battle that is now ongoing between materialist and religionist scientists that we discussed last week is going to make it harder to achieve any kind of positive result. We know that. But, truth is truth! And as Craig Hogan and I work to promote seekreality.com, as we prepare teachingsbyjesus.com, and as I blog and do my podcasting and day by week by month by year as we do everything possible to teach as many people as we can the glorious truth that there really is no death, at least we know that we are doing all that we can to try to lift the world. And if you will do all that you can do as well, then perhaps we might yet plant enough love to supplant and choke off sufficient weeds of fear, and we might soon manage to bring for humankind a very much brighter harvest day!
Although you see me going ‘long so,
Oh, yes, Lord,
I have my trials here below.
Oh, yes, Lord.
If you get there before I do,
Oh, yes, Lord,
Tell all-a my friends I’m coming to Heaven!
Oh, yes, Lord!
– From “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had” in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
hello Roberta, just thought I would send a light-hearted message, when the day comes when you pass over into the spirit world make sure…..you give us a sign…!!! let us know what is the sign you would most likely use,for us all to say..aha…..that’s Roberta.!!!!
I second that suggestion!
And I “third” it!
Oh my dear Fran, once there is good electronic communication from there, we’ll set up Seek Reality Lo-o-ng distance!!
Dear Jennifer, one insight into the reason why these promises to send a sign after death never work came from the great afterlife pioneer Sir William Barrett, who communicated extensively with his wife after his death (he died in 1925). They had a secret word that he was supposed to give to her to confirm that he had survived his death. And he was so frustrated that he never could remember it! He told her that when he was in his full eternal mind, he remembered it easily. But in order to draw close enough to the earth to communicate with her, he had to strip down to his earth-level mind again, and once again he would lose that word. I really think this problem is by design, so I wouldn’t try to defeat it!
Oh my dear Jo, if I thought for a moment that this would work, I would be delighted to do it! But it won’t work. It has been tried many times, and never once to my knowledge has it been successful. I personally think that we are not supposed to have such a definitive proof just yet, although there are some sensible explanations for why the attempts to make these proofs work haven’t yet been successful. But I wouldn’t want to attempt it, and then have our likely failure be taken as a proof of anything negative!
What a crazy world we’re living in!
Despite being able to reach out globally via the web, spreading just the simple message of survival by making contact with individuals is as difficult now as ever it was.
Podcasting has the potential to reach many more than using websites and/or forums but first folk still have to know you’re there. It compounds the difficulty that the more popular a chosen medium is the more you’re competing with many, many others who have chosen the same medium for their own needs.
We’re swamped by the amount of ‘hits’ we get if we go looking for a particular subject. Sorting the metaphorical wheat from the chaff is a chore.
Maybe being a big cheese on Twitter, TikTok, WhatsApp or whatever is the way to reach a global audience but first you gotta find a way to BE that big cheese. 😉 Even then could we truly reach a global audience?
Mac,
This is such a timely commentary. Occasionally, I will go into YouTube when I feel a “pull” and sure enough, there will be something in my suggested listing.
I ran across one the other day, that brought up this point you are making! The obsession with “hits” and popularity is rampant.
And yet, I personally am thinking about learning “discernment” on my end. And it may be a big lesson for us all. What IS Truth, to us? What DO we want to focus on-Life and the Living, or death and dying? It’s like that Native American parable about which “wolf” do we choose to feed in our mind.
Even videos that claim NDE, or Angel Messages, or even Jeshua/Jesus should be sifted carefully! None are any type of “guarantee” that it’s Truth!
Starting around 5 years ago, my sister and I talked about the churning of events in the world, and I off handedly said, “We are in a time of personal responsibility.” I should add that I have realized since then, it’s also a time of discernment, trust, and massive growth.
And my dear Mac, it isn’t remotely enough to simply give people that message. I am traveling, seeing legal clients, and last evening I shared dinner with an old lawyer I hadn’t seen since pre-Covid, who actually told me that when you die you just fall asleep and you don’t wake up. He is 84 now, and he found that thought comforting – he didn’t want to hear any complicating details! He was always stubborn. Unbelievable.
Dear Roberta,
You so well described the plight of humanity, and why there is so much unrest and unhappiness. This is the mortal, Human condition by God’s design. You perfectly well observed, ” Individually we are indestructible, but nevertheless we are susceptible while we are on earth to endless attacks of morbid negativity that our modern excellent communications have vastly compounded. ”
That “we” you referred to is really two entities. There is the one that is eternal, our spirit temporarilly attached to our mortal body–and that body does die (even if a residual ghost of it remains, sometimes doing mischief).
God created Heaven as our eternal home of blissful existence. But then he obviously constructed the material world (even if having an illusionary basis) and mortal bodies to live in its environment that creates stresses, injuries, and mortal death. So, if God wanted to relieve us of the plight of mortality, he would terminate the material world and our temporary lives in it.
It is a grand endeavor that medicine ethically pursues (something lacking now in big pharma with the government pushing for ineffective, and even harmful MNRA injections, and body mutillations in children over sex confusions); that churches pursue when not corrupted as attendance diminishes, prompting them to disregard Christ’s guidance to instead merely be popular, with whatever is the current fad; and that ethical politicians pursue by actually working for constituents, instead of working out deals in the Establishment for when they leave government service.
The mortal world is stressful by its basic design. It is noble to pursue making it less stressful, such as getting out the word that we are made of a body and soul, and that our eternal soul is briefly visiting here for education unavalable in the seemless blissfulness of Heaven. So, while we may work to end the fear of death, and to encourage faithful application of the Golden Rule, there would be no reason to despare that the human condition continues to bear injustices, physical pain, and death.
Oh my dear Jack, so perfectly and beautifully said! Isn’t it wonderful how our growing older so wonderfully concentrates our wisdom? And now at least we know what needs to be done, so at least we can try. At least we do have that one candle against the darkness!
Dear Roberta. This blog post reminds me of something I pondered lately. Does so much fear and negativity pull down the consciousness of the Godhead itself?
Wow Ray! THAT is a very interesting question! I recall reading in some other channeled works, even some in which Jesus is present, that our polluted consciousness can have an effect in other realms and so there’s been a “barrier” of sorts around us so that we do not cause harm to other life “out there”.
Yet, I am also reminded of messages from Jesus and other High Beings that “the Plan” was/is planned to perfection and that there WILL be success; that alone, should lift some burden of worry from us.
Hi Fran. That’s comforting. Thank you.
My dear Ray, this is a wonderful question, and I had not thought of it. So I asked Thomas about it, and he and I discussed it, and he tells me that it’s not even close. We should think of consciousness as a very deep pail, open at the top, with negativity as a kind of sludge at the bottom and with the High God above the top. That sludge can get deeper and heavier, as it has in this present case, but still it is well beneath where most of us are, at levels three and four; where our spirit guides are at five and Mikey Morgan is at six; our Godhead is at seven; and Jesus is even above that. The negative effect is on earthly cultures only, and those cultures in turn damage susceptible people on earth. But this is a great, really helpful question – thank you for asking it!
Dear Roberta. Thank you (and Thomas) for your reassuring explanation.
Yes, Roberta I still fear death. Even though I have been reading and listening to you for a year, and have treated others in a decent manner, I still fear the Life Review, and the Outer Darkness. Since there is an Outer Darkness, then is that not Hell? Even though it is not Dante’s Inferno Which also is a great source of fear that is unfortunately still being taught.
Hi Jeff,
What has been helping me is being brutally honest with myself.
Did I screw this interaction up and why did I do it? Why did I hurt this person and what can I do to not make the same mistake again?
My biggest weapon, in battling that fear you speak of, is learning to completely forgive.
Not only others, but most importantly myself.
I do believe when it is time for my Life Review I will be prepared to learn from my mistakes and have already forgiven myself and others.
We don’t have to wait for our life review to start the process.
This is helpful, my dear Thomas. Thank you! And it is important, too, to directly raise your spiritual vibration, because what some of those who have communicated after their life reviews tell us is that they were prepared to confront and forgive their bigger screw-ups, but what got them were some more minor-seeming things that they had altogether forgotten. We’ve got to be prepared to forgive everything, no matter what!
Thanks Roberta, I can only imagine how many little gotcha’s will be in my review. My spirit guide will need a vacation after I return. haha
Oh my dear Thomas, you have made my Thomas smile. He tells me that all our spirit guides need time for themselves after having spent a lifetime guiding one of us! But they get tremendous spiritual value out of it. IF – he hastens to add for my benefit – we strive to hit all the marks that we had planned to hit in this lifetime!
Oh my dear Jeff, I so much wish that a year were enough time, but for most people it simply is not enough time. It took me two years of deep immersion in the evidence to kill my fear of death, but I was a real skeptic. Some points:
* Send me your email address, and I will send you a PDF of The Fun of Growing Forever. Do its exercises and raise your spiritual vibration. Learning perfect self-forgiveness is the surest way to beat the Outer Darkness! (Which is not hell – not even close).
* Join seekreality.com for a couple of years and participate there. Everything that Craig Hogan and I have learned in a combined eighty years of afterlife research is there in one place – that website is designed to kill your fear of death.
And if you still have questions or issues, I’m here. You can do it. Guaranteed!
I have your book on the Fun of Growing Forever, and will re-read it. As others have said, I am fortunate not to have any major screw-ups in life, but probably have many gotchas!(whcich is what is concerning me) I also am a member of Seek Reality .com, and eagerly await Jesus’ Teachings website. I don’t interact, because I don’t have the technology, but still use it. Thank you for your reply, and advice as well as others.
As always thank you, Roberta!
Your texts are so hopeful. I suppose death fear also includes social anxiety of not going to be accepted/ included in the flock both here and after death.?
With a couple of things, i have also made my own little conclusion that has helped too. That no one is lost.. and that there is help on the other side if needed.
I know a very appreciated clergyman who only conveyed God’s love and “open-minded” . He once had an unexpected but very beautiful message from his dead father through a medium. This meant everything for him <3 And for his father to i really think. And his father was not a God believer. So… 🙂 <3
Then at one of the many funerals he had… an organ player saw the dead man sitting in church! watching his own funeral …He looked very satisfied and told her " what a nice event this is" 🙂 Only she could see him.
Another time my mom and dad had a very clear warning when a (not so honest ) door salesman came. Suddenly everyone also this salesman heard a hard knock on one window…my mom instantly knew it was her father who died 5 years earlier because this thing with unwanted salesmen was one of the worst things he knew and did not trust at all.
My my my if he still lived now with every telemarketer calling these days….
There are more things that have convinced me.
Best regards from Kristina
Oh my sweet Kristina, please be assured that there are no in-groups and no outsiders in the afterlife! Everyone is in God’s clique. Jesus loves each one of us perfectly. And yes, there are rehabilitation gardens where we go first of all if we have even the slightest need. They think of everything!
And thank you for sharing those sweet stories. People very often do attend their own funerals, to the point where I tell folks to assume that the decedent will likely be there. Quite lovely!
First, my question: Was the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20 really a thing ?
Opinion: The best action we can take is to “wear” the hope that we have so that people will ask us, “why are you thus, and what is the reason for your thus-ness?” Then, we maybe we’ll have an opportunity to share with them…planting a hope seed, gently and respectfully. Perhaps there are some like me, weary of all the shoutings over the wires which say, “Here’s what we gotta do,” then another, “No, here’s the answer !” I think that’s why –to paraphrase the Bible– Jesus said to simply love the Father (Source, Creator, et al) and love others, and if you need a religion, then take care of widows and orphans. I know I’m “preaching to the choir” because many of the past comments indicate an understanding of this already; it seems so simple (and simultaneously, so difficult regarding some people or groups). Whenever I start to “worry” or “fear” that I’m not raising the world’s vibration, I fall back on His simple instructions. Whaddya think ?
Yes my dear Gee, absent the reference to baptism, which would have been an anachronism, Jesus did indeed send His disciples – and us all – out into the world to share His sacred teachings with all of humankind. And you are right indeed when you say that the best advertisement for the truth that you can be is to live it. To shine it forth!
Dear Roberta,
Thank you for such a timely and truthful commentary today. As I read about your journey out of fear, I saw myself! I, too, used to be so fearful of the dark (though the particular house I grew up in may have had a lot to do with that). As I have paused to reflect on the past decade or so, I am amazed at how I have released and walked away from old fears, worries, beliefs.
And while I agree with all you put forth as to “causes” for the seemingly growing fear, I also have been made aware of courageous and light filled movements all over-some, which may “appear dark” on the surface, thus the way it’s portrayed in the news. I think of the courage of the people in Iran, in Ukraine, in India, in Taiwan and many other places. As I watched a story about Iranian protests on PBS, I asked myself, “Would I have that courage to protest a great wrong? Would we, as Americans be able to stand with such courage and passion against oppressions?” These people are not carrying weapons, not trying to wield physical harm…they are carrying signs, chanting, pleading. And in these stories, I have found myself realizing they are not fearing death.
I mentioned to Mac that I came across some YouTube videos recently, and from those I have discerned and learned to pay attention to if my heart directs me. In one, the message is that all this “stuff” happening-the wars, the arguments, the breakdown of old old institutions(physical and non physical), old “laws”, old beliefs, old patterns of behavior, etc-are happening for us to “see”-to simply SEE it, and in seeing, we then make a choice to release. And no one single person (like a guru, teacher or religious or spiritual institution let alone governmental institution) is responsible for giving us the “yea or nay” of these issues, is “anointed” to make the choice for all Mankind.
I often think of a scene in one of the Harry Potter movies, in which a group of “good” wizards, stand with wands up, with light on the ends and aim to the swirling darkness of the death eaters, the small gentle orbs of light drifting up and breaking apart that swirling darkness, as if to say, “no, we DO NOT give any power to these false perceptions and lies, we choose light.”
I sometimes feel very “alone” in my environment, trying to be strong in loving my fellow man, etc. as Gee says. And very often, I am gently reminded, usually when I am in prayer and communion with the Christ, that in truth, I am never alone!
Keep on keeping on with your work!
Beautifully said, my dear. And even in China now, too. In truth, it i the work of us all! They may fear death, but they fear living in oppression even more.
Fran, thanks for an exceptionally well explained valid perspective.
Thank you, Jack. And I thank you for always offering us “that much more” to consider, to stretch our minds, just a bit.
God bless you, always, In All Ways
Dear Roberta,
In connection with the topic today’s blog post – the fear of dying – I’d like to recommend a book I’ve just finished reading, “To Die is Gain: Near-Death Experience and the Art of Dying Before We Die” by Johann Christoph Hampe (Translated by Margaret Kohl). This book was originally published as “Sterben ist doch ganz anders” in 1975 by Kreuz Verglag Stuttgart, and in 2022 was re-published by Afterworlds Press, an imprint of White Crow Books, Ltd.
To Die is Gain examines our modern concept of ‘the fear of dying’ from the perspective of the Near-Death Experiencer. The author, Lutheran minister Johann Christoph Hampe, wrote ‘To Die Is Gain’ after having personally experienced clinical death (NDE) and a return to life as a result of a serious illness. In considering his own near-death experience, which he termed “dying seen from within” and similar accounts of other near-death experiencers, Hampe concluded that our present fearful, dreadful attitudes toward death and dying are unjustified.
Copied below are links to information about the book from the White Crow Books website:
Link #1
http://whitecrowbooks.com/ebooks/page/to_die_is_gain_near-death_experience_and_the_art_of_dying_before_we_die
Link #2
http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/feature/dying_before_we_die_by_johann_christoph_hampe/
Dear Roberta. This week’s post on fear seems to get to the nub of so many of the world’s problems. About 7 years ago, I got a strange message on my phone answering machine. An eerie, vaguely preacher-like voice simply stated, “The soul will never grow old. It is evergreen.” That is a beautifully concise way of stating what we all need to know. By the time I got around to calling back the # on the caller ID it was a non working #. (Did anyone else reading here ever get that call?) That message presaged my subsquent path of study and experiences leading to my certainty today that the message was true. If only every person on Earth could get some sort of a nudge like that to look deeper – then again, maybe when and if they are ready, they will. As far as the turmoil we see in the world now, I hope it is a sign that more and more people are waking up, just as the reactionary forces of fear and all the evil that springs from it scramble to hold humanity down. Which will win? I suspect that love will ultimately pravail, that there is a grand plan, but the results are by no means guaranteed, and all of us have our little bit to play, each in our own unique way, just as you say, which higher guidance can help us find, if we will just knock on the door, ask the questions, and answer that metaphorical phone call from higher mind.
Wow, my dear Scott, how beautiful! Thank you for sharing!
Scott: I didn’t get THAT call but got a call that did nothing but play flute and drum music, and then stopped without saying a word. I called the # back but it was a non-working number. I am sure that it was generated by a Native Am. friend of mine who knew I loved flute music, and he had died several years ago
That’s fascinating Lola. I hope it was your friend. Years ago I read a book about phone calls from the dead, so I guess it’s a thing.
It is indeed a thing, my dear Scott! I’m surprised that it’s not more common.
Scott: I bet the book was by Scott Rogo. It was called “Phone Calls From the Dead” and was a best seller. I read it also.
My dear Lola, I know of someone who for months had calls left on her answering machine from her newly transitioned husband, so this makes perfect sense!
Oh my God! How did he do that for such a long time? That’s mind boggling
lt evaporated Erica
Oh no! I hope not permanently??
This is Erica
This tablet has issues
Dying –the word– should be deleted
The Mandela spins and then stops-step down
and WOW!
I worry l won’t have the energy for many lives!
Rest in Peace my eye!
Hi Roberta,
My comment wasn’t me or it was me at 4pm.
I accept I’m a Drop in the Ocean, but part of me
wants to beat my chest and shout–Hey, it’s me,
Erica–
it’s me!!!
Often,I am scared of Knowing, but I can’t stop seeking.
I can’t wait for. Teachings..to come out!
Oh my dear beautiful Erica, I end every podcast by telling each listener to always remember that he or she is the most loved being in the universe. Because that is perfectly true! And we know it’s true because Jesus tells us that it’s true. He says that God even marks each sparrow’s fall, for heaven’s sake. God knows the number of hairs on your head! God loves you that much! We cannot even imagine how infinitely precious we are to God. Each and every one of the eight billion of us that there are now on earth, and the goodness knows how many more there are in the astral plane. And it is a peculiarity of our dear and glorious friend, Jesus – fully God and fully Man – that He also loves each of us the way that God loves, and He loved us that way even before He was an ascended being, or so my Thomas tells me. He loves people. He looks at you, and He loves you with His whole heart. Even more than wanting to be loved like that, I really wish that I could love the way that Jesus loves!!