As I’ve listened to what has to amount to hundreds of Near Death Experiences one thing that is common, almost universal, is the after life is more “real” than this life. Nearly everyone reports brighter colors, more colors, incredible sounds, sharp (superhuman) vision, etc. People say it’s like being home. I was listening to account yesterday of a woman who was just shy of her 21st birthday when she was thrown from a horse and found herself leaving her body. She was a successful rodeo performer at the time, in peak physical condition, young, attractive. She had everything to live for, but she says as she left her body and looked back at it, in those few moments she had already lost an attachment to it and thought “That poor girl is messed up” as she looked at her mangled leg. She felt like she was home and did not want to come back. Just that quickly she was ready to go.
I continue to fill my head with these stories because it runs so counter to what my programming is. What is real is what I can see, hear and touch. What I real is being in this body. This body is me. When this body ends, I end. The attachment to the body is necessary. We are supposed to cling to this life with everything we have. The veil is there for a reason so that we can focus on the lessons we are here to learn. If we were aware 24×7 of what we truly are, we wouldn’t have a full human experience. (Random thought- that is why of all the Jesus movies I’ve ever seen my favorite is Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ- that Jesus was real. He was human. He had the doubts and fears that are an inevitable part of humanity.) I try to imagine “heaven” as a real place, but I have to say that even after all of this time it still seems ethereal to me. Not quite real. Not quite solid.
Accepting this world as reality works for most of us most of the time. It’s what we should do, but there comes a time in some of our lives where that is no longer enough. Shayna has moved from this reality into the next reality. I have to have confidence that she is there. I have to have confidence that I will go there. It brings me comfort to hear people who have been report that they never really left. It brings me comfort to hear that, from their perspective, time is an illusion and it’s not a long wait until we’re together again.
One experience I heard recently was of a guy who died and while he was out of the body he visited his brother-in-law who was several states away gardening. He reports that there is no anger or sadness or those types of emotions on the other side, but he believes there is frustration, at least there was for him. He stood there talking to his brother-in-law, who of course could not hear or see him, frustrated that he would not acknowledge his presence. He thought to himself “I’m right here. Why can’t you hear me?”
Every day I talk to Shayna. At the very least I tell her good morning and good night. I tell her I love her. I don’t know how often she’s here or if she needs to hear those things anymore, but just in case she does, that will never stop.
