Posted by Roberta Grimes • September 17, 2022 • 61 Comments
Afterlife Research, Jesus, Understanding Reality
People are often unreasonable and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
– Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), from “Do it Anyway” (Provenance Unknown)
A legal client of mine can recite today’s frame-verse from memory. She lives by it. As best I can tell via a quick Google search, these words were found on the wall of Mother Teresa’s spare little cell at the end of her life. And do you know, the more I think about them, the more they seem to be not a half-bad way to live a life of service. Whatever you do is always between you and God. And no matter how hard you work, you really cannot accomplish a blessed thing if you are worrying about what people think! Another bit of wisdom that a client shared long ago also has stuck in my mind. He said, “When you are twenty, you worry about what people think of you. When you are forty, you don’t care what people think of you. When you are sixty, you realize that nobody has been thinking about you at all.” Liberating words to live by! Although on the other hand, someone else once told me that if you pick up a calf on the day he is born, and you continue to pick him up every day of his life, eventually you will be able to pick up a bull. I never have tried that, but intuitively it doesn’t seem to be wise. Especially as the bull gets friskier.
But collecting aphorisms is one of the fruits of spending a lot of time with people who would like you to think they are very smart. And yet my beloved mother-in-law, who lived with us for the final decade of her life, actually gave me the greatest insight of all; short, of course, of the endless perfect wisdom that we have received from Jesus. She was forty years older than I was. And one day soon after her husband had a medical emergency that made them need to move in with us briefly – then he died soon thereafter, and she never left – she looked at me, and with an air of mild surprise she said, “You know, I don’t feel any older than you are.” I looked kindly at that dear and lovely woman who was then eighty-five years old, and who once had been a dancer so she sat and moved with dignity. But my goodness, she was eighty-five! And I smiled and thought, yeah, right!
It is only now, as I am closing in on eighty years old myself, that I realize that, you know, my dear beloved Mom was precisely right. I am no older in my mind than my own daughters are. I take walks with the daughter who lives with us. I pursue the same work-day that I did at forty, and the only concession I have made to my age is that I am more careful about avoiding injuries. I have given up horseback riding, for example, but I shrug about that, since I know it’s only temporary. And my Thomas has promised that I will ride out on Beau! So now my confident advice to forty-year-olds is to take care of your body and your mind. I may do a whole blog post of advice about that. I can see no reason why you shouldn’t live and work precisely the same way at eighty as you are living and working at forty. Because I do!
There. That has given you a palate-cleanser, after we had a bit of turmoil in our comments section last week. And it occurs to me, too, that you might like to hear about the way that Jesus laughs. Thomas and I are meeting often now with Jesus as we talk about The Fun of Loving Jesus, which has been written and is in its revisions stage; and we also are talking about Jesus’s website, which is deep in its planning stage. I am not being allowed to remember our meetings, but I often wake up in the middle of the night with what I think of as marching orders. Have you ever known a bright and wholesome twenty-year-old? I have a grandson that age, and he reminds me of Jesus. Which is odd, when you think of it, given the rather dramatic difference in their ages, but Jesus has chosen to look and act about the same age as my grandson is now. Jesus has the most wonderful, delightful, and amazingly youthful laugh that sounds as if He is still a teenager, so His voice might crack at any moment. His laughter is loud and sweet and spontaneous, as if something had surprised and delighted Him. I woke up last night with the Lord’s laughter echoing freshly in my mind. I wish I could remember what the joke was about!
And now, with our palates all suitably cleansed, let’s dispense forever with the thought that God might be able to condemn anyone to hell.
First, of course, comes the plain certainty that God never judges us. Jesus tells us this simple fact in the Gospels the way He had to tell us a lot of things two thousand years ago, by breaking it into innocuous-seeming facts over days of time because He was always under observation by Temple guards. On one day He said, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23). Okay, fair enough. He wasn’t arrested for saying that because at least Someone was going to judge us, right? But then, on a different day with different Temple guards, Jesus said, “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (JN 12:47). And no Temple guard was bothered by that, either. But when we put both statements together, we hear Jesus telling us what in fact is true. There is no post-death judgment at all by any religious figure.
Instead, you yourself will be your own judge. That fact didn’t have to be mentioned in the Gospels, but I get a kick out of the fact that Jesus brings it up this way. Especially when you consider all the ears and minds and mouths and hands through which the Lord’s words had to pass in order to reach us, it truly is amazing that any of those words have survived at all, and especially with such specificity! Each of us, when we return home, will undergo a life review and get to feel how we have made everyone else in our whole lives feel. And then we will be asked to forgive everyone, which we gladly will do. Last of all, we will be asked to forgive ourselves. And that, of course, will be the problem. When you see how awful you made a few people feel in some situations that you have long forgotten, I sadly guarantee that you are going to feel pretty awful about yourself. No wonder Jesus made such a point of stressing our need to learn to forgive, no matter what. When His disciple, Peter, asked him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (MT 18:21-23). And thinking of the life-review process brings to mind Jesus’s warning that we must not judge, lest we be judged. He said, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you” (MT 7:1-2). Because He knew that one day soon you were going to face this almost impossible task of having to forgive yourself.
So, now we understand that there is no post-death judgment by anyone but yourself. I think we have thoroughly made that case.
But, is there a hell?
I wrote a blog post a year ago this weekend in which I explained how we know that there is no hell. I cannot improve on what I wrote back then, so I hope you will read it as if it were a part of this post. Please “incorporate it herein by reference,” as we lawyers like to say. And Keith Giles, my favorite modern theologian, does an effective job of demolishing the various theories that some have put forth that Jesus might ever have taught about hell.
That leaves us just a few suspiciously hellish-sounding Gospel references to something Jesus called “the outer darkness.” For example, “I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (MT 8:11-12). And, “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (MT 25:29-30). Oh, good grief! What is all that about?
The lowest level of the afterlife and the astral plane is cold, dark, smelly, disgusting, and exactly what Jesus called it: it’s the Outer Darkness. If we cannot forgive ourselves after death for the way we have made other people feel during our lifetime just ended, our consciousness vibration slows until eventually we will end up at that very lowest level, simply because we can fall no farther. And apparently we cannot raise our consciousness vibration unaided and manage to get out on our own. Eventually we will be rescued, but meanwhile our existence is miserable indeed.
So God cannot send you to hell because, first, there is no post-death judgment by God or by any other religious figure; and second, because there is no hell to receive you.
And meanwhile, our planning for Jesus’s website goes on. I have no memory of these apparently almost-nightly meetings that we are having with Jesus, but I can tell from my Thomas’s general mood and from the few little tidbits of memories that he lets me keep that progress is being made. But Jesus seems more and more to be thinking like a radical! I graduated from college in 1968. Smith, like most other colleges, ended classes early that year because in 1968 my generation was marching in the streets. We had seen what governments could do, drafting our high school friends to die for nothing, and we were out there trying to tear everything down. And now, insofar as I can tell, Jesus has come to feel every bit as radical about those in religious authority. My Thomas has access to the life-memories of Thomas Jefferson, who was another radical thinker who didn’t trust putting governmental power into the hands of just a few. And there my Thomas is, conspiring with Jesus, who has spent the past two thousand years healing the pain that too much power in the hands of a few caused to all those millions of martyred Christians.
I have no idea anymore what my role in all of this is supposed to be. All I know is that, apparently, now Jesus no longer wants to call His planned new movement The Way of Jesus. He no longer wants it to have any rules, because if there are rules, then soon there are rulers. I just look at my Thomas (so to speak) and say, “Not even ‘Love your neighbor as yourself?’ What the heck kind of sense does that make?”
He is in his Jefferson mode at the moment, so he just says some of the more airheady romantic-dreamer things that Jefferson used to say in life, like calling for a revolution every twenty years. And an entirely new Constitution. He says that since Jesus will always be there, then why does His movement need to have any rules?
“But I won’t be on earth to interpret whatever He says! How long do you expect me to live here, anyway?”
“Eat right. Then you’ve got another thirty years. Maybe more.”
Well, I have to say that at least now Jesus does seem to be a lot happier. That’s something.
Reading your words about the lowest level of the afterlife worries me. If it is so difficult to forgive ourselves, and I certainly find that hard, it sounds as if many people will end up there. I am concerned for those who , in life, suffer from mental illnesses and others who have lived in ways that make self forgiveness hard even if they have not been really evil in this life. I can’t think of anywhere worse to end up. To be able to meet the condition of self forgiveness sounds like a test and one I fear I may not pass.
Good Morning Maggie!
I find myself feeling the way you feel, from time to time.
Ironically, I have more concern for those close to me in this life-spouse, children, siblings-than I worry for myself. But, occasionally, when the ego gets a hold on my thoughts, and guilt starts to rise, I do worry about accomplishing “self forgiveness”.
Fr Robert Benson, who gave information about the afterlife to a medium spoke much about this “outer darkness”, and what I found hopeful is the knowledge of “rescue teams”, of which he enthusiastically joined. He shared stories about meeting up with those in the darkness and meeting with them, encouraging them, and times when that encouragement raised their spirits to depart such a place.
I am given to recall an experience I had after my dad passed. I had worried about him, but after having such a wonderful experience being with him at his passing and having forgiven him earlier, that worry seemed to dissolve. But one day, some months later, I awoke from a dream that caused me to worry my “prayers” were not sufficient (don’t be laughing at me Roberta! LOL), and so I cried out to God to ensure dad was loved and nurtured and “saved”, and I spoke of all the good of him. Suddenly, my phone went on-it was on my nightstand, no alarms set. But it wasn’t even an alarm. It went to the music library on it (which I am not skilled at operating) and was playing Josh Groban singing, “You Raise Me Up” !!! I burst into joyful tears and was thanking God after my initial shock of staring at my phone going off. I also thanked my dad and told him I love him.
To add just an extra “kiss” of smiles from Heaven, I had a reading with Trudy Griswold (AngelSpeake author) in just hours from that point. Trudy found herself speaking about my dad in such a joyful way and was “informed” without specifics, about what happened; so she was passing on the message that he is fine and busy and grateful.
My point in this is that we CAN influence those dark areas even as we are “living” here! It’s not about having masses said, or particular “prayers for the dead”, but what’s in our hearts. It sounds to me that you are an earnestly compassionate soul who doesn’t want anyone to suffer, and may well have a “side job” in this life on this side, helping to lift the darkness for those who linger there.
The very fact that you feel as you do, is, to me, a sign that you have nothing to worry about! Much love to you!
Dear Fran, your phone story is really quite surprising! I love hearing such stories – it seems that the veil really is thinning.
Mee too… But i practice EFT and loving kindness meditation to myself and others and that helps a little bit. Sending you love. Love to everyone here, to you Roberta, your Thomas and Jesus ❤️He sounds so lovely so wonderful and so so sweet. We have to love and forgive our self and we can because God have already forgive us. And we can say i’m sorry to every soul from here. We have like Wi-Fi to each other 💓Best wishes!
Oh Kristina! I can feel your sweet loving kindness from here! Thank you so much! ((HUGS))
Fran❤️Thank you too for your kindness 😍🥰🙏🌷
Oh yes my dear Kristina, one amazing thing about Jesus is that He seems so young at heart. For not having been in a body for two thousand years, and literally being God for heaven’s sake, how can He be so light of heart and even playful? I have come to think that it’s because he spends so much time with children. There have been more than sixty million abortions in the U.S. since 1974, and every one of those fetuses grew up in a children’s village in the afterlife to young adulthood – it takes 8-10 earth-years. Jesus enjoys playing with all those children, and I think it helps to keep Him real!
Yes!
Childrens energy is so full of joy 🤗
Thank you Roberta for all your precious work! Showing us who he really is❤️and spreading his and your love and hope. Helping so many away from the deepest fear of judgement/ death. (and therefore in my case, i now can enjoy life moore. Just like children dare to be moore in the moment having fun, spreading joy and kindness) and learning from my mistakes ( many 😅)
Hello.
In response to the fear that one might be unable to forgive oneself, it reminded me of a short mini-sermon I recently read. It is from a different tradition than here, but I think Roberta, Thomas, and Jesus would be able to translate the principles into something that better fits this website.
Context: this was written on sheets of paper for a woman who was eighty-six, totally deaf, and absolutely refusing to eat. The family had asked the pastor to see if he could convince her to start eating. And, this was a woman who had never been exposed to Buddhism. Each “” is a sheet of paper.
“Your body is a container of life. It contains true and real life. Your body and your true and real life are two different things, related but different.”
“Your body is old and tired and doesn’t want to go on living anymore, but true and real life within you is not. In fact, it wants to live on forever.”
“You have taken care of your body up to now, but now you must take care of true and real life that flows within you. Something deep within you wants you to awaken to the precious life that moves within you.”
“As you awaken to true and real life within you, you will feel good and warm and alive. Then everyone, including those who love you, will also awaken to that same true and real life.”
“Although I don’t know you at all, in one sense I have always known you—through true and real life that flows in you and me and everyone around us. Because of this shared life, I love you deeply as I love myself deeply.”
“When we appreciate true and real life that flows in the deepest parts of ourselves, then we also take good care of its container, this body, for without it we could never have come to realize true and real life.”
“To die or not to die—we really don’t have a choice. If we could choose, it would make things so simple. All we can do is to take good care of our body and our life, until the fullness of time and being brings to close our existence on this earth.”
“In my own life I often forget about true and real life deep within me. But whenever I do and get lonely, unhappy, frustrated, or angry, something deep within me calls me to awaken to true and real life.”
“The call is a call for me to return to my real home, the home of homes, where all existence really comes alive. I hear the call through the words, namu-amida-butsu. This is known as the Name-that-calls.”
“Namu is me—lost, confused, and wanting to find my real home. Amida is Immeasurable Life and Light—true and real life which is my home of homes. Butsu is Buddha—the awakening to this true and real life. The three are not separate but one, so we say namu-amida-butsu.”
“In response to the Name-that-calls, I say namu-amida-butsu. This is my acceptance and affirmation of true and real life. No need to understand, no need to explain anything, no need to convince anyone. Just namu-amida-butsu.”
“Although I myself am incapable of truly loving another person, many people love me—many times in ways unknown to me. Although I fail to appreciate others’ concern for me, they truly sustain my life. But when I live namu-amida-butsu, I am made to appreciate others and want to thank them—all this by virtue of true and real life.”
“I am then filled with warmth, love, and compassion. May you awaken to true and real life that flows in you, me, your loved ones, and all beings. Thank you for listening—not to me but to the call of true and real life coming from deep, deep within you and me.”
(He later found out she had started eating again.)
Why did I write this? This is a form of Buddhism that seems made for those who feel lost, or who might not have lived the most virtuous life, basically those who might worry about ending up in the outer darkness. And, it should be easy to forgive yourself after death if you have made peace with yourself before death, as you are, warts and all.
Thank you, my dear Jason! And everyone, it really is difficult to fall as far as the outer darkness. There is so much love and counseling available to us there that we forgive ourselves before we fall so far. Mostly it is concentration camp guards and such – basically good people who went horribly wrong – who really can’t be redeemed and end up there.
Oh my dear Maggie, in fact the atmosphere of the afterlife is so love-filled, and there is so much help and counseling available to you there, that very few people do end up falling that far. I have reason to believe that my own father may have fallen as far as Level Two before my mother arrived there twenty earth-years after his death and halted his slide, and I even think I know what his issue may have been; but nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed. If you will send me your email address, I will send you a PDF of The Fun of Growing Forever, so you can begin right now to learn to become a forgiveness star of stars!
Dear Roberta,
Thank you for the uplifting post today. One of the things that strikes me is that with all the evidence, there are still those in “authority” who refuse to let go of the nonsense; like they WANT there to be a “hell” and suffering! And yet, in their daily lives, surely they’ve experienced a strong desire to wish others well, that no one has a “bad experience”. Whenever I encounter the wrath and judgement diatribes about such things, my mind goes back to eons ago, when man was trying to “work out” why he was here, what was the meaning of life on this planet, etc. These old beliefs are so…..OLD! It just seems so weird to me that we’d somehow ponder and choose to believe that God wants us to suffer, that we have to live by rules, are watched every second and judged, and worst of all, that he’d send his beloved son to come here and die in order to make us perfect. The only thing that comes to mind is the possibility of other celestial races overseeing mankind for a time, trying to teach and help us evolve, and we misinterpreted their teachings.
I wonder if they shake their heads in dismay in Heaven often.
PS….so do tell! What is “eating right”, per Thomas!
You know, I really don’t know. When he spends a lot of time with Jesus, he falls completely under His influence. That would make me 105 years old!
. “Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw/destroy you (body and soul) into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” (Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:5)
Jesus said that….lewtag
Lewis,
Given what we continue to learn from Jesus, is it possible he is referring to our ego self? The “self” that judges, separates, condemns, instills fear and guilt?
The self that Roberta is talking about here, that may hold you back from forgiving yourself?
I’m just asking.
Incidentally, given how the church has persecuted people throughout its existence, I am not so sure about all that was translated and makes up the bible. Honestly, how can we trust those who had killed his followers not long before establishing the church? Jesus seems two different people throughout, going from love to almost vengeance. It’s very lonely, for me, at least, if I put it aside as a big long “story”, more of mankind than of God. Also, as they are learning Aramaic (which is not a dead language by the way), they can see how things could easily be mistranslated as it went to Greek and thus to Latin (which IS a dead language).
Actually, Jesus didn’t say that. I’m sure it was added later, and probably at Nicaea in 325.
Lewis, just curious why Jesus would want us to fear him and want to throw/destroy us in hell?
No, my dear Jackie, that was part of Nicaea’s effort at church-building!
Hi Roberta, I was just curious if Lewis really believes that foolishness. I don’t believe for one minute that Jesus said that.
Hi Lewis. It seems to me that the concept of a God that would throw us into hell is what should be feared. The bits of fear based junk like this that have heen sprinkled in here and there are so obiously in contradiction to what Jesus taught about love and forgiveness. All the healing Roberta talks about Jesus needing to do over the last 1700 years would be due to garbage like that.
As always, my dear Scott, this is perfectly said!
My dear Lewis, I have wondered about that passage myself! Since it is in both Matthew and Luke, it probably is in the source document. Still, we can be certain that Jesus didn’t say it – either it was added before Nicaea, or the Councilors added it to both books when they were assembling the Bible.
The gospel of John is the most accurate since it’s an eyewitness account of events and later had the least modifications to it. And I’m not just saying that because it’s my name!
The stone throwing story being a complete fabrication is the best example of that. Jesus didn’t say or do all that. Makes zero sense and reads pretty ridiculous.
Are you talking about the woman taken in adultury, John?
Hi Roberta. There was a strong strain of utopian, apocopalyptic, or as they say, eschatological thinking among the first century Jews, as they groaned and fomented under Roman rule. Many believed in a coming end time, based on sayings in Isaiah, Daniel, etc in which all the dead would litterally be physically resurrected, and God would make all right again, rewarding the martyrs and punishing those who had wronged them, bringing about some sort of utopia. This sort of thinking is out there even today! As I go back and look, Matthew 10 is full of that sort of stuff. It would seem that whoever actually wrote it had bought into that, and maybe peppered a bunch of those references into actual wisdom sayings attributed to Jesus (the so-called Q material?) That may be why we end up with the sort of seesaw feel that Fran mentioned. Add to that the possibility that later copyists or apologists swap in the totally medieval hell with its fire and brimstone, a concept that didn’t exist in Jesus’ time, and it gets to be a mess, but the love based gems still shine out from the dunghill as Thomas said. Another thing that didn’t exist when Jesus was preaching is some world dominating Roman Church that one sees here and there in the NT. I found what you ( and Jesus) wrote in Liberating Jesus so very helpful on this issue. The New Testament can make so much more sense when we read it with this understanding.
I think MT 10 may be one of the books added later – or at least severely doctored – by the Nicaean Councilors. We are going to have to get into this issue more deeply when we tackle His website.
I feel precisely the way you do, Fran – it’s creepy the way some church folks seemed to enjoy this hell and damnation stuff! And I have read its history. My goodness, it was almost like pornography in the church, there are reams of it, all the hellish punishments for the particular sins. But they certainly did want ther to be a hell, and the more painful and demeaning, the better!
Dear Maggie,
Consider that what we are motivated to do comes from two separate and distinct sources as mortal. We have an eternal soul that comes into the material world attached to a mortal body. By design, our body is motivated to avoid danger and harm even though such behavior may injure others. Our soul, however, with its God given conscience is concerned about the welfare of others, to include animals, and even plants, and the environment. And as human, we simply cannot forsee all of the consequences of our actions.
Now, as Roberta tells us here, the life reviews from those who experience a temporary release of their soul from their body and have a life review are reported to place us in the bodies of those with whom we have interacted so that we feel what they felt, both their joys and their pains. Feeling such pain is alarming, but we are not judged for our ignorance in doing what our inherently selfish body motivated us to do–such experience that we have here, the good and bad of it, is why we come here to gain a learning experience by which our soul develops. Realizing how imperfect our life has been, we may then agree to having another life, and may do so multiple times.
As creations of God, we are never left to induldge forever in self pity and remorse, so we will be guided either to return to Heaven or to have another life. The body that we have in a lifetime does itself return to the Earth as mere chemicals, but our soul continues on in an eternal journey.
We will never be abandoned, but instead will be given the opportunity to continue our eternal journey with our Creator and His other creations.
In 1968, when Roberta was graduating college, I was graduating with my PhD, that after having been a high school drop out. As Roberta says, in old age we may continue on mentally, although with the limitations and burdens of our aging body. Just this past month at age 84, I have published a paper explaining how a major feature of quantum mechanics was a mistake, and that mistake now leads scientists and engineers to pursue magical fantacies; if curious about that, just google my name with “implications for superposition and quantum entanglement” to see the paper which is written in plain English without use of any arcane mathematics.
Enjoy life as much as possible while understanding that our journey is eternal.
Oh my dear beloved Jack, you always make me smile! I love it that you are publishing scientific papers at 84 – you are such a blessed inspiration to me!
Hi Roberta,
I know whom I have hurt already. I have been selfish with my
time. I don’t say mean things; I retreat.
I would like talk to them here, rather than be put in the ‘repent”
chair. If I am delegated to the darkness, I am going to ask for a flashlight!
So, even though there’s no hell, you still cannot get away
with anything.
Life is so exacting! It’s like math. I got a”D” in it.
I didn’t care how ‘x’ get to the other side! I majored in Lit; I loved
to read, write papers and read some more.
I never was into details.
As I look outside, all the birds and flowers have built in guides .
I have frre will, but I haven’t a clue what to do next!
Erica
Oh my dear beautiful Erica, there are no grades given in life! I was going to say that there is only one rule, but Jesus is around me tonight and He is still in His no-rules-so-no-rulers mode. He is telling you to lighten your heart and begin again from today, just like those birds and flowers. Simply be love, and you will know what to do. What can you do today that will make someone happy?
Interesting replies, thanks and love to you all.
I certainly can’t bear the thought of anyone suffering for ages never mind eternity.
It was my horror at the idea non Christians would supposedly end up in Hell that started my quest to investigate different views of the afterlife .
Hey 🙋♀️That’s mee! I just can’t bare/ stand with that. Knowing only a few to be in bliss forever and the rest suffering forever because they “failed” in this life. Very heartbreaking 💔
If we are “one” higher soul we suffer when others suffer. We can feel it in a contious or even moore in a subcontious level.
My dear Kristina, we are all one Being. The separations among people are all pure illusion. And knowing that, we are at peace..
Thank you for your love❤️
Hi all, this is a very extensive comment section. I have to say my life has been a process of learning forgiveness for myself and others, and I am coming to a point in my life that I can say I actually like myself, flaws and all ! When I think of reflecting on my life in the afterlife, I find much comfort in the fact that I likely don’t even know many of the things that I did to hurt others, so worrying about it now is counterproductive. Looking back to my upbringing and the idea that being saved meant asking forgiveness from those whom you have sinned against, actually was an impossible task. We need to be patient with ourselves and know that we are unique and the fact that we even worry about such things must be pleasing to Jesus.
Oh my darling Tim, Jesus doesn’t want you to worry. Jesus is only love, and the purest love. He came to free us from all the pretty and lesser fears, so we can be only love, forevermore!
It’s odd that the message of fear was placed in both Luke and Matthew, as if they wanted to be sure it would be noticed. If the concept of hell didn’t exist in Jesus’ time, then why is it clearly mentioned here?
Because religions need fear in order to function, my dear Lola! Nicaea had to inject fear into the teachings of Jesus in order to create the Roman Christianity that Constantine needed. Sadly, that was a primary reason why their council had been assembled.
I guess I meant that it had to have been added on after he was gone since it is so out of whack with everything else Jesus said. The council’s main (and maybe only) goal was to generate fear
Yes, true, my dear Lola, because the Council was working for the Man. It was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine in order to standardize his form of Christianity, and he expected a religion that he could use to control the masses!
I know — he was pure evil
Hi Roberta & Everyone! Back in 2011, I had a crippling fear of hell due to my Christian upbringing and have worked hard over the past decade to deconstruct that belief system. Just when I thought I had fully conquered that fear, I have come across a great many NDE accounts on YouTube of Christians & non-Christians having extremely hellish experiences. Some of them are rescued out of the tormenting realm & others say they need if they had actually died, they would be there forever. All of the folks recounting their experiences in the videos seem very credible. Is their an explanation for these experiences if “hell” doesn’t exist? I would really appreciate your insight on this!
Oh my dear beautiful and much-beloved Steven, I am going to put my answer in bold CAPITAL letters to further comfort you.
ALL NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES ARE IN THE NATURE OF PERSONAL DREAMS. BECAUSE THE SILVER CORD HAS NOT BEEN SEVERED, THEY HAVE NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH DEATH. Therefore, they can tell us nothing about what happens after a completed death. They often involve astral travel, which accounts for some of the amazing experiences that people can have during NDEs.
If you like, my dear Steven, please feel free to show my answer to the IANDS Board and tell them I said that they have allowed all those Youtubes to terrify you and so many other people completely unnecessarily, and it is long past time to put what I say above in bold on a banner at the top of their website. You can invite them to take it up with me directly, if you like.
Thank you so much, Roberta! I have not heard that take on NDEs before. That does help. So if I’m understanding correctly, NDEs are occurring in the astral realm. For some, they go out of body and end up experiencing unconditional love & meet benevolent beings of light. And others go out of body and fall into a dark, hellish place & encounter malevolent beings. Are you saying that those hellish places are in the astral and if the NDEer’s silver cord was cut during the experience, they would find themselves in a different place? The places that all your afterlife research points to?
Thank you so much for your help & loving kindness!
Dear Steven, there is a blog post here a few weeks back called The Silver Cord. You should read that – it is crucially important. There are NO hellish places anywhere of the sort that the people in the YouTubes experienced – PERIOD! Those were just dreams provided by those individuals’ spirit guides, and nothing more real than that. There are NO malevolent beings. All part of the ishy dream the spirit guides gave them to scare them straight. The silver cord does not break easily, but if it were to break, the individual would simply enter the usual death process, accompanied by his spirit guide. Again… no hell. Because there is no hell!
I should add that if you really want to know the complete truth and sleep well at night, seekreality.com is the best source for the whole truth about what happens at and after death. And it is all good news!
Got it! Thank you, Roberta!
I subscribed yesterday to seekreality.com. I look forward to studying all the content!
Roberta, near death experiences are dreams created by spirit guides? Am I understanding you correctly? How do you know that and how can spirit guides create dreams?
Then you are in the best possible hands, my dear Steven! 🙂
Dear Jackie, your spirit guide operates internally, as a part of your mind. Most NDEs happen when your body is temporarily unable to sustain your mind in stable condition for one reason or another, so you have an out-of-body experience, and your spirit guide facilitates that. Often, then, your spirit guide will enrich the experience in various ways. Why – what did you think that an NDE was?
I’ve never heard that near death experiences are dreams and spirit guides being involved.
No. But the truth is that NDEs are not related to death at all, and many people – like our friend Steven – suffer a lot of unnecessary distress because IANDS has not been willing to be up-front about that fact.
If near death experiences are not at all related to death, what are they? Do you have a blog post on the subject of near death experiences? Thank you.
Oh my dear Jackie, there are many! The best one is probably “Near-Death is not Real Death” and the most recent one is “The Silver Cord.” Just put the titles in the search bar and they come right up.
Dear Roberta,
Your point that the Near Death Experience is not about Death itself is valuable, as there was no permanent death of the body, or there would be no report. It is also important to realize that during the OBE the brain is no longer controling experience and the perception of experience, so the experience is not confined to the material world, but may include the astral world. However, to call the expwerience a “dream” is potentially misleading, because most think of a “dream” as the disjointed imagination produce by the brain while asleep–and that is clearly not the case when a person having an OBE and so is able to report accurately on events here on Earth too distant from the body to reflect ordinary sense-perception (the text by Titus Rivas, et., al., “The Self Does Not Die, documents over a hundred cases of OBEs in which consciousness of the reporting person must have distanced from their body/brain to be accurately reporting on the distant events), terming the OBE as a dream is potentially misleading about their nature.
So, consciousness is shown to be discarnate by good research on the OBE. Best to refer to OBE reports as such, not as “dreamwork.” But given the fact that the reports are not from the dead, we cannot know from them what happens when death has arrived.
Research shows the reports are overwhelmingly positive with feelings of being loved. My own published research also found evidence that the OBEs associated with trauma (reported as NDEs) were had by folks who never had faith in God, or lost their faith, and served as a life course correction. In discussing this finding with Ken Ring, he wrote that he too had come to that conclusion about them.
Oh true, and a good point, my dear Jack. But not all dreams are mere fabrications of the brain, since some are communications from departed loved ones (for example), and a few of what seem to be dreams are indeed communications or experiences created by our spirit guides. And as you know – and say here – some NDE experiences are quite negative. Yes, as you conclude here, we certainly can agree that they cannot tell us what happens after death!
Hi Roberta! So to recap & make sure I’m understanding correctly, the hellish NDEs are OBEs in which the spirit guides have created the experience which, although it is occurring in the astral realm, is not a real place in the astral realm. Even though it is extremely fear-inducing, the spirit guide takes the person through the experience as a kind of wake-up call for the ultimate benefit of the person. Upon actual death, they would never experience such a terrible place. Do I have it right?
Yes, my dear Steven. There is no actual place.
Dear Roberta, Fully agree about lucid dreams–which are not produced by the brain as are ordinary dreams; I class lucid dreams with OBEs.
Bottom line, I have faith that God creates us from His very being, and does so with the love of a parent. Further, that we are given a naturally harsh materiel life so that we can realize just how wonderfull existence in Heaven is, and enjoy our eternal journey with our Creator.
The emphasis by religion on sin and fearful redemption is a needless corruption of our journey here which makes our hard material life needlessly worse.
Oh my dear Jack, we certainly do agree on that!