The Wheel of Life

A dear friend just experienced her daddy’s passing on Christmas day. This post is a tribute to her and her father.  It’s also a response to the constant reminder that on the wheel of time, death has a place.

For me, what inspires courage and brings me solace is knowing that even if our physical bodies cease to function, the spirit we experience now, the one we call the I, never ceases to exist.  Consciousness persists to experience itself, even after physical death.

We don’t die, anymore than a butterfly dies when it ceases to be a caterpillar.  Contrary to conventional teachings, we can communicate with those who have crossed over before us.  The main channel of communication after death is dreaming. 

We’re lucky enough to live in a time when science is taking life after death seriously, due in part to the number of verifiable NDEs (Near Death Experience) reported by both medical specialists and patients who have the experiences. There’s also the growing body of work on sleep, dreaming, lucid dreaming and OBEs (Out of Body Experiences) that explodes outdated views on life after death.  Personal experience can put us in a position to re-examine our old religious beliefs and materialistic myths.  

Modern physics is a new science that goes beyond materialistic dogma, just as contemporary spirituality goes beyond patriarchal religions.  Dreaming is something anyone can do; once a person learns to dialogue with their own dreams, a bridge beyond the physical is revealed. In fact, there are a great variety of psychic dream experiences that, with a little knowledge and effort, most dreamers can test drive for themselves.

As a dream teacher, by far the most common dream people describe to me is about someone who has crossed over.  I love validating their dream connection and honoring those amazing stories of loved one who’ve crossed over.  So many times, people are told to dismiss these dreams as wish fulfillment fantasies, though most people intuitively know their dream is uncanny.  I love seeing the relief and amazement in so many people’s eyes when we speak of their dreams of the departed as something real and important.

Dreams are an organic rainbow bridge between these two realities; they are life and death.  Each of us has access to so much more than material reality in the dream realms.  One thing for sure, our loved ones who’ve crossed over speak to us in dreams.  We can nurture that communication as much as we want by always paying attention to our dreams.  

Our loved ones still love us and know that we have the tougher road here in the contemporary material world, with its political insanities and wars.

Our loved ones still want to help us.  They also have their own affairs to look after; there is a point that we might want to let them go on.  But grief is a state of being that must be honored. When we lose a loved one; there is no way around, only through the grief.  I’ve found dreams guide us through the grieving and recovery process, in part by granting us access still to our beloved.  Relationships can continue and they can evolve.  I’ve grown to understand many things about my parents, and about myself, because we continue to know each other in the dream realms.

Through dream teachings, I’ve come to better understand the importance of forgiveness. What would we do if we couldn’t reach out to those who’ve crossed and ask for or give our forgiveness?  We would be consumed with unresolvable remorse and regret.   Dreams help us understand that death is not an end to the connection. Death leaves a huge physical vacuum in our lives and that hurts, but dreams open a window we can explore to a new kind of connection, one that can bring us the consolation we need to keep healing from our pain. 

The other day, a friend told me a beautiful dream she had days before her beloved mother’s death. In it her father, who had predeceased her mother by many years, was hustling her mother out of a cab in a city where they used to live. My friend wondered at the dream and was saddened by it somewhat, but when we spoke of it, I could see in her eyes and hear in her “ahhh” that the dream’s importance just knocked on the door of her consciousness.  

Many people are drawn to see a medium when they lose a loved one.  I’m not attracted to this option, though I do respect the psychic virtuosos among us.  But, as Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet of the 20^thcentury wrote, each of us is capable of psychic understanding if we pursue it in the laboratory of our dreams. I don’t fault anyone who seeks the guidance of a psychic to connect with a loved one, but I wonder that people aren’t more interested in learning how to connect to those they love themselves.  Dreams are a bridge to the afterlife; they give us experiences of both sides.  If we each pay attention and develop our own dream practice, we don’t need mediums to mediate our personal connections to our departed.

I thank my dreams for messages they’ve brought from my mom and dad, for how they’ve helped each of us, on both sides of the divide, grow in love and compassion.  I thank dreams for keeping me connected to this essential part of my life, my relationship to those I loved and lost from this temporal dimension. Dreaming isn’t the only way to connect to our beloved departed, but in my estimation, dreams are the most organic.  We’ve born dreaming and dreaming we’ll exit, if we’re lucky.

In the meantime, I’m alive.  Knowing what dreams have taught me about life and death helps shape my  waking existence.  Ecclesiastes said we came naked into this world and naked we’ll return.  We can’t take any material thing with us; what we do take with us is what we’ve  become through our own actions on earth.  

According to the celebrated expert on OBEs, William Buhlman, outside of the physical dimensions, like attracts like quite readily.  Think of the power of attraction on steroids. My motto is if you don’t want to be spending your next existence on another plane living with assholes, then just don’t be one now.   Endeavor to learn how to choose the essential and dismiss the not important.   I choose love so that Love is where I land when I cross over; it’s simple.  

Religion purports to offer guarantees about our “salvation” if we pony up with whatever is required.  They claim God is Love, but stack the deck for themselves, the rich male patriarchs, and psychologically handicap the rest of us with guilt, sin and other bull-crap. We don’t need religion to feel ok about the afterlife. It’s not that God is love; it’s that Love is god.  Love is an energy that’s vital to life, not an anthropomorphic projection that looks just like the guys in charge.  Choose Love and Love will guide you when you cross and help you find you’re way. Choose violence and hate and that might be your heaven when you cross; it’s a choice. 

There’s no judgment; we learn while we’re in the physical and we continue to learn, grow and understand after we’ve left the physical.  Consciousness evolves; hallelujah!  We can help ourselves along if we break out of the mesmerizing herd and smell the dreamy coffee.

The right practice and attitude towards dreaming can open important psychic channels.  The importance of dreaming doesn’t just belong on a psychiatrist’s couch; dreams belong in our daily lives.  Dream sharing in families and among friends can be wonderful fun, and dreams can bring us great personal gifts of understanding and guidance.  And, so importantly, dreams can help us heal from the grief of loss; they can help us stay connected to everyone our hearts have embraced, even after death.

Dreams can give us the courage to live from our hearts, to follow our best dreams and to triumph over our fears.  I wish everyone bright and powerful dreams in 2020 and all of us, the courage to make our best dreams come true for the good of all. 

May it be so.