Posted by Roberta Grimes • April 30, 2022 • 52 Comments
Death
Why should I feel discouraged?
Why should the shadows come?
Why should my heart feel lonely,
And long for heaven and home?
When Jesus is my portion,
A constant friend is He.
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
– Civilla Martin (1866-1948), from “His Eye is on the Sparrow” (1904
It’s time for us to talk about the greatest day of your earthly life! I’ll grant you that from where you sit, it may be hard for you to envision the day when your current body expires as the greatest day of your earthly life. But please indulge me here, since that future day will bring about a shift in your perspective that might surprise you.
As we have been preparing to launch Seek Reality Online, we’ve been harvesting the best evidence from nine years of podcasts and seven years of these blog posts. And it has shocked me to realize how poorly I have been serving you in helping you to get your mind around what actually is going on in this brief and temporary reality that we share. Our bodily senses are useful tools for living here on earth. But that fact makes of them a tremendous ongoing distraction! Look around you now, and try to realize that the solid-seeming room in which you sit is 99.9% empty space. Your eyes and fingers tell you it’s a solid, friendly, and familiar room filled with furniture and the tchotchkes accumulated throughout your busy earthly life; but in reality, you are sitting in a howling void that you have ventured into only briefly, wearing this imperfect meat-suit. And you bothered to enter it only in the hope of raising your personal consciousness vibration enough to make it easier for you to do some things once you have returned to the places that matter more to you than anything your mortal eyes can see. Have I helped to shift your perspective a bit?
And in this blog each week, we have mostly talked about amusing, entertaining, often speculative things. In quickly sifting through these years of blog posts, I can see my own understanding evolving in ways that I have sometimes found to be enlightening. But I also can see that I have failed you badly in not talking more about where this is heading! The earth-life that you are living now was carefully planned before you were born, and with the assistance of people much wiser than we are whose only concern was to help you gain as much spiritual growth as possible from your brief venture into what Craig Hogan calls Earth School. In the process of planning, you and they planned two or three potential exit points that your higher consciousness could choose to take whenever it judged that you had wrung as much spiritual growth as possible from challenges that you had planned into this lifetime. One such exit point is generally in youth; one is in middle age, and often after some significant life-crisis had been mastered; and one is somewhere in old age. But there are exceptions. In Mikey Morgan’s case, he tells us that his brief life-plan had two planned exit points. One was at the age of twelve, as I recall, and the final one was at the age of twenty. He and those who had helped him to plan that almost unthinkably burdensome extra lifetime had assumed that he would bug out at twelve. But unexpectedly, he was so much enjoying his life as an American teenager that his second exit was the one that he wound up taking.
Your exit point is generally chosen about a year before the death event. You won’t be aware on a conscious level that a choice has been made, but on a subconscious level you will begin to heal any personal rifts, perhaps take trips, and in various ways tidy up your life. When people attend a celebration of someone’s life, often they will hear mention of these tidying-up efforts that were made within the last year or so. And yes, a death is possible that is either accidental or random, but such unplanned deaths are rare. If you find yourself outside your body and alone in a situation that seems to be a non-planned death, simply call for help. People who have been in such situations tell us that help in the form of a tall and glowing (sixth-level) being arrived at once, full of apologies, and escorted them straight home!
It also is possible to go off-track at death. To my surprise, Mikey tells us that as many as a quarter of dead people may wind up going off-track in various ways, although most of them are quickly rescued; which is another reason why it is important for you to know the usual drill, and to follow it closely. You can assume that every suicide is an unplanned death, and since you cannot kill or even lessen the awareness of your mind, for you to kill yourself will only make all your problems worse. Fair warning.
Of course, there are many planned ways to die. And some are neater than others. Among the easiest ways to die might be an immediately fatal auto crash, since you are out of your body and out of the vehicle before the impact happens, so you calmly watch it from above with your spirit guide right there for comfort. Many planned youthful deaths happen that way. On the other hand, cancers and other wasting illnesses can be slow and uncomfortable ways to die, as I often have been indignantly reminded by readers of The Fun of Dying. But terminal illnesses can be wonderful life-lessons. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross told her children after her death that her own terminal cancer had been among the most spiritually important lessons of her life. And of course, our bodies resist dying until they are severely damaged or sufficiently weakened that they are no longer able to sustain life. But how ever we get there, if death is not instantaneous, the last few days before a planned death occurs are remarkably uniform. Although, of course, everything that we are saying here refers to planned deaths only! And we should add that, except for religious terrors, which can be highly traumatizing, the death process itself seems for most to be a pleasant and generally pain-free process:
So, let’s say hypothetically that you have just died. Your loved ones around the bed are calling for the doctor and feeling for your pulse, and your instinct is to reassure them that you have survived your death just fine. “Hey! Here I am!” But in fact, that is the worst thing you might do. If you try to interact with the living, you will lower your consciousness vibration and lose your ability to perceive the dead loved ones who have come to take you home, and that is the easiest way to make a new ghost. Your living loved ones can’t see you now anyway, so the smartest thing that you can do is to get out of there just as fast as you can. Remembering having read this blog post, of course you are going to do just that!
You, your mother, and your childhood dog soon find that you are entering a grayish fog. Your vibrations are rising rapidly now. Others have quietly joined you, too: your spirit guide, and perhaps more loved ones. And as you look back at your death scene, you see that the room and the people in it are looking vague and vapory. And then they fade away altogether.
The arrival gardens on the third level of the North American afterlife will require a separate blog post to do them any kind of justice, so we’ll be talking about them next week. But even before we get that far, I think you can begin to see that the day when you finally leave your earthly body might be turning out to be not such a bad day, after all!
I sing because I’m happy!
I sing because I’m free!
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me!
– Civilla Martin (1866-1948), from “His Eye is on the Sparrow” (1904)
In 2008 my friend and I planned a shopping trip and since she lived in the opposite direction decided to spend the night. Had she not been there to call an ambulance I’m certain I would have “exited”. I have to wonder if a planned exit date can be overridden.
Oh my dear AC, what an interesting question! The answer based on the literature is, “probably not.” But all of us can point to near-misses. We are told to attribute them to spirit guide intervention – in other words, your spirit guide, who is outside of time, was aware of the fact that you shouldn’t be alone that night.
I needed this today, thanks for sharing your knowledge and helpful wisdom. Please give us more like this.
This post was powerful and helpful in dealing with my own shedding of this earthly body. Dust to dust indeed.
Ah yes, my dear Michael! I think that all of us become rather too heavily invested in these familiar physical situations. I look forward to what we’ll have to say next week. It really is pretty overwhelming!
I discovered a way to “Overcome the Fear of Death”. I’m amazed how simple it is.
Watch Near Death Experiences (NDE) over and over until it clicks. As many times as necessary. Just like Roberta says, we don’t die. I highly recommend Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Laurin Bellg -NDEs in the ICU. Dr. Greyson, Raymon Moody, and others started IANDS. I can’t recommend this youtube video enough. Search below.
Dr. Bruce Greyson- Near-Death Experiences, Consciousness of Science & Scientists – IANDS NDE
It’s life changing.
Hello my dear! It’s nice to hear from you again!
It’s lovely that you find some comfort in accounts of near-death experiences, although of course as you know near-death experiences have nothing whatsoever to do with actual death. Each near-death experience is a spontaneous case of out-of-body travel, usually stress-induced, and the experiences which happen in each NDE are (a) produced by the NDE-er’s spirit guide, (b) highly personal to the NDE-er, and of course (c) unrelated to death, since they occur in the general astral plane and not in the afterlife area. In fact, more extensive NDEs often include a warning that the NDE-er has come close to the area where the dead are, and if he ventures closer his silver cord will break and he will be unable to return. So, my dear, no one who returns to tell the tale ever actually has died, even for a moment. But nevertheless, as you say, many people do find NDE stories enjoyable, and they take comfort in them as evidence that our minds can exist easily apart from our bodies!
“MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE” what in the world does that mean?
What is Gods image? God is “Supreme Consciousness”. He put a small piece of himself in each one of us called consciousness. THAT CAN’T DIE. We are gods with the little g. Fill your bucket with water from the ocean. What’s in you bucket is not the ocean but it’s the same stuff. Fill you bucket with desert sand. What’s in your bucket is not the desert but it’s the same stuff. We are the same stuff.
In my research on consciousness it became logical to infer that we are maded by God (pure immaterial consciousness) from His own being (there is no cosmic Home Depot or Lowes to get fresh material), so in that sense we are made in His image ( https://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experience-Space-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B081T7D7LQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jack+hiller&qid=1588777468&s=books&sr=1-1 )
Well said, my dear lovely Jack! You always do make me smile!!
My own view is that in fact, insofar as we can determine, only what we experience in a dim way as human consciousness objectively exists. Indeed, there really is nothing else.
Okay, my dear, now you are just toying with us 🙂 !
Where did you get the phrase “Made in God’s Image”? You certainly didn’t get it here!
Not to mention “His”🙂!
My dear Ray and everyone, here is the problem with the old Biblical suggestion that we are “made in God’s image.” Actually, it is the reverse of what is true! In fact, all the old gods and every singular image of a God as well is made in our image. That is why Jesus told us to think of God as Spirit, and to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. God is in fact Consciousness. There is nothing else but God! It is God in which we live and move and have our being. When we understand that there is nothing else but God, and that we, in particular, are God’s best-beloved child, then in that moment and forevermore, all fear is gone!
Dear Roberta, You make here a profoundly bold, really stark, statement, ” There is nothing else but God! ”
You claim to know such by your understanding informed by Jesus, as well a other notable spirits. I also find it most intereasting that your education and work practice do not inform you about physics– yet I have never found you to err when making points, as they are always consistent with sound physics, or claims in physics, such as failure of the “hard scientists” they claim to be in dating the Big Bang (a theory completely inconsistent with recent observations of far distant (presumably very old) galaxy clusters that would not have had the time to form if the estimate for when the Big Bang would have occurred, based on a simple extrapolation backward from currently estimated expansion, were accurate; even more important, the complete failure by physics to recognize that immaterial consciousness is the foundation of all that exists (something that Max Planck had realized, but the physics community rejects out of hand). My own research over the past 12 years (post retirement) drove me to the conclusion that the basis for all that exists is the consciousness that we refer to as God, and that eveything else we might know about, spiritual and material, is based on God’s consciousness– nothing else exists or could exist.
Why there is God, or how there is God is also a topic impossible to explain from mortal knowledge (which greatly frustrates my curiousity).
Dear Roberta , my wife died of cancer and i can attest to the fact that everything you wrote here is 100% true . I saw my wife talking to people that were invisible to me . She always had fear of dying but as the time got closer she lost her fear of death . About a month later after she died , i dreamt of us and i was walking her away and we were stopped by a fried who exclaimed ” my friend i thought you were dead , why did you give us such a scare ?” . My wife replied : no i was not aware that i am dead , i thought i had just gone to hospital for a procedure. this is when i realize that life goes on after bodily death . I have learnt so much through my own lived experience after the death of my wife to a point that i know enough not bother with religious text , i don’t even argue with people about death and the richness of life that exists after bodily death as you have to experience it for yourself .
Oh my dear wonderful Ernest, you have given such a beautiful gift here to so many people! You are so right – until you have experienced it for yourself, you cannot possibly imagine how easy and how glorious the transition to eternal life actually is! I am so glad for you, dear Ernest, and so grateful to you for sharing your experience with us here! Thank you!!
Dear Ernest, Thank you for your sharing blessing. It appears you have had what’s termed a lucid dream; in such a dream, I believe that your soul temporarilly separates from your body and thus enables such visiting to the spiritual domain.
Oh my dear Jack – answering you above, where the thread ran out – you and I are doing cutting-edge science where science, too, has altogether run out 🙂 ! In preparing the free introductory video for SRO, I apologize that I am offering physics from someone who has not only never taken a physics course, but also never has taken a course in mathematics beyond algebra II. But such is the state of the world today!
Well. I marvel at your error free accounts. Physics, on the other hand, is replete with serious error, such as near religious belief in the Big Bang account of Creation when observational data refute it (see The Big Bang Never Happened, Eric J Lerner, 1991, and my own research demonstrating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and quantum entanglement are mistakes, fictions ( https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/934 ). But of course the biggest fiction is that there is a material existence independent of God, when in fact everything that is is of God.
Oh my dear beautiful friend, my wonderful Jack, you give me so many giggles! Really, our little family here is enriched by your gifts to such an amazing extent!!
Dearest Roberta,
This blog seemed to explain well what went on in my late wife Jessica’s knowledge of her exit point well before she actually exited. She would often say “when your number is up, you die”. This behaviour lasted for a while and then stopped when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Could it be that she was preparing me for her exit by giving me these reminders? If so, how would she have known that I needed to be reminded?
Yours,
Cookie
Dear Cookie, I didn’t realize that you were a widower. I’m sorry for your temporary separation from your wife, but yes indeed, even if it was unconscious on her part, it is very likely that her spirit guide and your own were preparing you for what was to come.
This is a common occurrence. We need to learn to “pick up” on these things as it goes over the heads of so many people, Before my husband died, I looked at possible places to relocate, and he told me to wait until he died – that it would only be in six months or so (it turned out to be eight months), but he wasn’t even sick at the time. I was astonished. My girl friend thought he was joking since he was a practical joker, but I don’t think he was.
Wow, my dear Lola. Really? Was he very old? I hear these stories too. My husband turns 82 next week, and I certainly don’t expect him to transition any time soon!
No. He was only sixty, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and their life expectancy isn’t all that great.
Sixty! Oh my dear, he was a baby! I am so sorry!! My husband is a Vietnam War veteran as well, but he went as a physician toward the end of the war and he treated it more as a lark than he should have done. But my dear, you are so right, such a terrible war, and so many who saw combat were exposed to awful chemicals and their lives were shortened. Please accept a big virtual hug from me!
Thanks Roberta. Not only were there dangerous chemicals, but the sheer brutality they saw from the minute they got there did a real number on almost all of them. Many of the earlier deaths were via suicide.
Dearest Roberta and Lola,
It must be so hard when one’s life partner dies many years earlier, and one is left to somehow carry on thereafter. And I feel for everyone here who has lost the love of their life. It would take great strength and courage to keep going. This is the time for family and friends to draw close in loving presence to their dear bereaved one.
There is a time, maybe some weeks or months after the funeral, when the many calls and visits peter out and stop and the bereaved one is left to face the future alone. I guess it is those few people who are there when others fade out, who are true friends-family.
Isn’t it great to know that our departed ones live on and thrive in the Afterlife? Doesn’t that change everything for those of us left behind on earth? We have always hoped that we would meet people again when we cross over. This has been an ardent, human desire since prehistoric times, I’m sure. Now there is evidence that shows this to be fact.
And you know, I do not worry that I will go awry when my body dies; I’m not afraid that I might not go with those appointed to take me across to the other side. I remember that this whole creation is based on love, and it is love that guides the process of body-death. It is Love Divine who will guide me safely to that beautiful reception garden in the forecourt of the Afterlife. I just trust to it, if you know what I mean. 😉
But my dear beautiful Efrem, you may not understand how few people share your perspective and your trust that life really does go on! I have heard from literally thousands of people over the past twenty years who were desperate for the comfort of knowing something for certain about what comes next. Something happy. Most were older, true, but some have been as young as teenagers! For most of my life, my extremely weird hobby has been only that. But at this point, I realize that I have spent my life collecting little bits of knowledge that have aggregated to a kind of wealth that is now beyond price because almost nobody else on earth owns anything like it. Weird, but true. At this point, it still looks as if we’ll hit the end of June, although there still is a lot of buttoning-up to do. But the fact that both science and religions teach fear of death and a howling void instead of love and the joy of reunion with loved ones, even now, is a shame upon them all!
Dearest Roberta,
One day the magnitude of the folly of religious stalwarts and science dogmatists will come home to them. The truth will out! History may not remember their willful blindness kindly.
You own hard won wealth of knowledge will impact SRO frequenters in a big way. Once people see this long researched understanding of the greater reality – distilled into ONE website – its impact can only be guessed.
Sometimes with the greatest things, the resulting whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Such things develop lives of their own. And a true movement of change may gain momentum at a surprising pace when its time has come.
In short, I feel deep down that people are desperately in need of a new way of seeing; A new clear understanding of the meaning inherent in life. All the old ideas, norms and well trodden paths are tired and mostly spent.
Oh my dear Efrem, the oddest part of this for us has been weathering our website designers’ questions about positioning SRO against our “competitors.” But it has no competitors. Apparently it is very unusual for any successful website to have no competitors! How is it possible then for it to be successful, if it has no competitors? How can there be a market for it? So we have had to spend further time in the design phase, just making sure that there was even a market for it in the first place!
Hi Efrem: What kept me going was constantly studying the afterlife through books and a few good mediums, as I lost my whole family (small as it was) as well as all five of my dogs. I felt I was all alone on an island at first, and I still have many questions, but it has been a tremendous help to me. Believe it or not, I lost several friends by doing that, but I persevered, and sometimes I feel I am living in two different worlds.
The advice given here about paying attention to your “dead” visitors rather than those who are still in bodies is very good, I feel. It is one of the most important things we can do to help us transition.
Oh my dear Lola, it’s so good that you have been able to see that those you love are still here and still close to you! This time that we spend on earth is so brief, and too often it so much distorts our perspective. But I’m sorry that people who had been friends actually cooled to you as you were learning and growing! Wow, how can people be so shallow? It is lovely, though, that you have persevered, and I think you will find a wonderful new friend community as Seek Reality Online gets going. At least, that is our plan!
Very true words, all too true common experience. The inability to speak honestly and openly about our fears of where our “lost” loved ones are prolongs grief in the worst way. This is true regardless of whether the beloved is a human or non human. In a short time I lost father, brother, mother, uncles, friends, cats—and only because I persevered did I hear similar stories from others to know my experience of grief is not unique. This taboo against true exploring seems to get stronger not weaker in our culture, the closer we get to realizing how incorrect the culture is in its beliefs. No wonder life can feel so bleak.
Oh my dear Mike, I am so sorry. We seem to be coming to a kind of apotheosis in our society at this point, with religions failing and science at a variety of dead ends and literally nothing working any longer. It really is remarkable to see how absurdly it all is coming apart!
I sure hope so. I recommended a couple of “starter” books for them to read, but they didn’t and still called me crazy. I’m glad they are gone out of my life. How can you argue with someone if you don’t research what you are arguing about?
Oh my dear Lola, it always is fear at its base that prompts people to fight so desperately. When something makes them feel threatened at any level, they fight even more desperately!
Dear Lola, There is now a relatively new sourcebook of evidence from the recently published text reporting shared death experiences, At Heaven’s Door ( https://www.amazon.com/At-Heavens-Door-Journeys-Afterlife/dp/1982150424/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OXB82J0E7MBB&keywords=at+heaven%27s+door+peters%2C+william+j&qid=1651868271&s=books&sprefix=at+heaven%27s%2Cstripbooks%2C111&sr=1-1 ). Of course when alone, our material eyes tell us we are alone, but as children of our Creator, we have never been alone.
And Dear Roberta, I hope you soon create a community that understands the truth about our eternal journey with God, for which Earth lives are only educational blips.
Dr. H: I love reading about shared death experiences but there isn’t too much out there on this. I only read Dr. Moody’s book on SDE’s. The one you recommend looks great, so thanks for the information. It got super high ratings on Amazon.
Dear Lola, After two months trying of finish this book, I’m only half way thru, because its reports of what was happening at passing and the shared experiences are so emotional. I can only read one or two accounts, and then have to put the book aside.
Wow! I can’t wait to read it. Shared death experiences are even harder to ignore than the average NDE’s, as they are even more difficult to explain in any normal fashion.
My dear Jack, shared death experiences are, as you know, instances where someone at a deathbed who has psychic abilities has synced with a person who is dying and has joined the dying person for the first part of the journey. I enjoyed Dr. Moody’s 2010 book on the phenomenon, and I’m sure that it’s enjoyable to read about more such experiences, but they really don’t tell us much of anything that is new about death because – as Dr. Moody himself says in his book – the shared death experience ends before the journey to the next stage is completed.
And yes, my dear Jack, the SRO website includes a section called “Community” that we will be inviting people to use and build out just that way. I hope you will help us to design it so people can make the most of it!
My dear Lola, I feel for you; the sheer magnitude of your loss. I know you are very strong. Nothing seems to have put you off your journey of inner transformation! There are not a few people who give up seeking somewhere amid the troubles of life.
I’ve got a hunch that there will be many wonderful people on the other side, ready to party with you and celebrate your achievement when you return Home. 🌟🌟🌟
And as to dogs Lola – I love them so much. I wouldn’t feel complete without my greyhound at home. 🐺
Do you know that recent research claims we love our dogs more than people! Imagine that. 🙏🏼❣️
It is indeed wonderful that companion animals are part of our ongoing post-death journey, and they continue to live with us and be part of our lives after we transition. We do get to take our dogs with us! I think what is important about them is that their love is uncomplicated and forgiving, for people who might find it harder to love or might themselves have some less lovable traits. But for what ever reason, Fido will be there!
That does not surprise me, as dogs are loyal and all they want to do is be fed and be with us – no strings attached. Greyhounds are very sweet and lovable. You may have a hunch that I will be met by people who want to party (hope that’s true), but I have a hunch that you will wind up being a spirit guide – a perfect match!
Really my dear Lola? A Guide in Spirit?! Thank you for such a wondrous hunch. (I would love to do that..) Both you and I will want to really DO something worthwhile when in the afterlife, to be of service to the Divine. I just know this to be true. Whatever your choice of dedication will be, I know it will be something great.
And yes I do have a hunch that you will be celebrated when you go Home. Who knows how the ‘good’ in our earth lives is loved over there.
🙂🌎
Oh my dear Efrem, to be a spirit guide is pretty hard duty, and yet all of us have spirit guides… and all of us will be spirit guides. In general, more advanced beings in spirit seem to rate guiding others in spirit as easier than having to come to earth ourselves. And perhaps it is. No, skip the perhaps. Of course it is! I’ve been studying my Thomas’s life a bit, trying to figure things out. This learning that while he has been guiding me he also has been a part of Jesus’s inner circle, and figuring out that goes back a long way, has kind of rocked me. Spirit guides live large and complicated lives! I agree with Lola, my dear: graduate this time around, and you can have a big and very interesting lifetime ahead!
Perhaps I’m getting that you feel that being a Guide in Spirit might be beyond me, and I should just focus on graduating this time around.
Oh no, not at all! I feel that way about all of us. You are more prepared than most would be to become a guide. But I think that, especially the first time around, it is pretty hard duty. I see it in Thomas. I don’t think he expected it to be as hard as it has been for him. But then again, of course, I haven’t been anyone’s idea of a piece of cake!
And oh my dear Lola, you don’t have to feed or walk your dogs! YAYY!! No cat boxes either!! No cleaning the horse stalls!! And yes, people who were party animals here get to party hearty until the cows come home.
I have a question, just what makes you an expert on dying? This is just your personal opinion and you should state that. i was particularity offended when you said, “You can assume that every suicide is an unplanned death, and since you cannot kill or even lessen the awareness of your mind, for you to kill yourself will only make all your problems worse. Fair warning.” How cruel of you to judge that way and cause more harm and hurt to those who have lost a loved one to suicide. You don’t know what happens when people die! You obviously don’t understand suicidal depression is a physical illness. God doesn’t judge anyone, much less someone who is physically ill.
My dear Sue, at first your comment flummoxed me. But then I realized that you probably have little or no understanding of what is really a very well-understood topic that I don’t have the space to go into thoroughly here, but very briefly: all of us plan our lives before birth with the help of our spirit guides for this upcoming lifetime, and we plan into our upcoming lifetime two or three exit points that our higher consciousness can choose to take once it decides that we have gleaned all the spiritual learning that we can from this lifetime. Those possible exit points generally include potential causes of death, but higher-level (in general, sixth-level) beings have made it clear to us that suicide is never a potential cause of a planned death at a chosen exit point.
(And just FYI, God never judges us. Jesus says that in the Gospels. Regular readers here know that, too.)