Day 653- We Don’t Die. We Graduate.

Today, I’m on a video conference with the staff of www.thesoulphonefoundation.org  We are the team working to raise money and awareness for the work of Gary Schwartz and others on this side and the team of experts in spirit who are doing the actual work of creating the SoulPhone (™).

As I’m talking to the team it dawns on me that I think I have finally found my tribe and maybe the work I am supposed to do while I am here. These are people who see life the way I do. We share a common language, common goals and a common view on life.

The people I’ve been meeting over the course of the last couple of years are pretty particular with language concerning what is commonly known as “death”. We don’t often use the word death or say that someone has died.  I remember after Shayna transitioned speaking with counselor who told me that people often use euphemisms concerning their loved ones to deny they are really dead. They would say things like “he fell asleep”.  Children, and sometimes adults, would convince themselves that their loved ones were not physically gone, but were coming back. That is unhealthy. That is not what we are doing.

Saying things like “she graduated” or “she transitioned” is not a denial of the very real fact that the physical bodies we have will die. They will cease to function. They will disintegrate.  What is is is an acknowledgement that we are not our physical bodies.  Our bodies, for us, are more like the vehicle we drive while we are here.  To mix metaphors, when we “die”, we shed this body like a snakes sheds its skin or maybe more like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly and the body is the cocoon. This body is the dead skin.  It’s the cocoon. We go on, in a more glorious form than we can remember while we are here.  It’s important to remember our loved ones did not die. We will not die.  The language we use is important. Sometimes I struggle with verb tense when talking about people who have transitioned. Their existence is not in the past. I never used the past tense to talk about their existence.  They still are.  However, some things are in the past.  Shayna had a beautiful smile. Shayna loved to play volleyball. She might still have a beautiful smile. She might still love to play volleyball. I don’t know.  But, my friend Dawn’s son had lissencephaly.  He was wheelchair bound. Those things are no longer true of him. They are past tense.

There was a time when I feared death, feared God, feared judgment, that I said all I wanted to do was to barely make it into heaven and just be allowed to exist in a corner somewhere.  That’s not what I want anymore. What we do in this life, I believe determines where we end up in heaven.  Not that we have to earn our way into heaven or that we are rewarded for our deeds with a bigger house or a faster car.  Our deeds here shape our character and our character here determines what we will be like there and what we are like there determines the kind of people we are with.  Shayna graduated early from Earth school, with honors.  She did not die.  I want to do the same. It’s nice to have found the team I will be working with to accomplish that goal.  Graduation day is coming fast.