Spirit Set Free! Dealing With Physical Death

Over the past month, I've been involved with the illness and subsequent passing of a person very close to me. It has caused me to have to really think about how I interact with people on this side who are dealing with death because my perspective is very different because of my personal experiences with continued spirits. For me, people either wear a red suit (or body) this time, and will likely wear a blue one (body) the next time, but that has nothing to do with their essence; their spirit. The spirit continues on, whether dressed or naked brilliant energy. It never turns off but instead it simply rests a while and then returns, or goes wherever, on its next assignment as it continues on its journey of learning. Hence the reason I used the term "continued spirits" as opposed to "crossed over." I find it to be more accurate for what I've come to understand as the process.

About two months before his passing, it was apparent that my friend was having a hard time deciding whether or not he wanted to stay on this plane or not, as the back to back illnesses had been long and difficult. I had a discussion with him and let him know that I loved him, but that there were only two decisions in this matter that I could see. Either he needed to fight like a mad dog to live, or decide to go and we would then throw a great party. However this in-between namby pamby stuff would likely prove to be more of a nuisance than not, and so my suggestion was for him to make up his mind and do one thing or the other. Well my clear thoughts on the matter didn't necessarily take hold, and as humans would have things, it got messy emotionally, and inconsistent and far more difficult for him than I would have wished. But of course, we have free will, and that was his and his wife's choice. So I rode out their denials, ebbs, flows, rises and falls on the emotional roller coaster that comes from being unclear about this matter, as so many are.

Being squarely into middle age, I have lost the physical being of so many people who are close to me. Still, I know my situation is unique in that I know, even as they are leaving, that in a few months, I'll still be able to talk to them. I also know that's not most people's experience, so I may not be the best person to discuss this. Or else I am exactly the best person to discuss it. I tried to explain to my friend while he was still fairly lucid, that it didn't matter to me, because I'd talk to him either way but that he needed to decide what he wanted to manifest. It is the decision that seems to be most important as to whether or not we take an exit point or not, when we have acted in such a way as to still have a choice.

From what I've been told by spirit folks, we generally have five exit points - prearranged stop points in our lives for which we are scheduled to release this body and leave. That all depends upon the person and the agreements we have made before coming to this plane. I had a client once with eighteen predetermined exit points, so it is best to remember that God can do anything It wants, and there are ultimately no rules except that for our growth, God will change and adjust the rules as It sees fit. That is what makes dogma inadequate. This God guidance is fluid and changeable, not written in stone - literally. At any rate, the exit points are places where our growth is reassessed and it is determined whether or not we are progressing, or dormant, or in danger of regressing. If we are still learning, we stay. If we are idle and dormant and appearing not to get ourselves in gear for further learning, we might leave. If we are beginning to regress, with little indication that we plan to pull ourselves out of it, then we leave unless there is something to be learned from this. The final decision is God's, which is why some people can be snatched back from evident death at the last minute. Their soul gave some indication to God that they would use any extra time given to learn more. I have a friend whose father did this. On his death bed with terminal, inoperable cancer, he prayed and requested that he be given one year to complete some things he had not done. Although they never expected him to leave that hospital, he did, and had one year of mysteriously good health to operate with. One year later to the day, he literally dropped dead.

Now the trick to this is if you learn all you should, you leave. If you don't learn at all or all you should, you leave. So from our perspective, it seems inconsistent, and if you are a narrow thinker, it seems unfair. That is why people who subscribe to very simplistic explanations of this and the "good/evil" farce of longevity, are almost always disappointed. It seems unfair when good people leave us, and bad ones stay on and on, being misguided and doing more evil. Well it never was the plan to be punished or rewarded for good and evil, and no matter what kind of feeble and childish explanations we have for why a loved one stays or leaves, it isn't our realm, and thus we generally have to figure out what the differences are. Not think we know from some cookie cutter explanation that is clearly inadequate for the real world.

With the departure of so many people in my life - all of whom I can speak with now as continued spirits - I have paid attention to one thing. Living well, and dying well and the parameters of this focused lesson. I had a friend who was very close, and had suffered incredible injustices as a child, having been molested as a child for a lot of years by her stepfather, with her mother's apparent knowledge. It is important to note that the mother was also the youngest spirit I have ever done a reading for, or rather about, being only 17 lives incarnate. She acted like it too - a bad, bad child. My friend, her daughter had spent her life being a good, solid person, but at the end of her life, she decided to use the money and security she had accumulated from being an attorney, to force her mother to act like the mother she had never been or able to be. She dangled those carrots in front of this greedy and selfish woman who allowed her husband to molest her child so she didn't have to go to work, and in turn, my friend turned herself into a darkening spirit, more shallow than she had lived her life for the years before. She focused on her losses and what she was determined to gain back before leaving this plane. She kept saying that if she couldn't have a decent mother all her life, she would have any piece of her at the end, even if she had to bribe her to come and take care of her and act like a real mother. By the end, she had distorted into the worse version of herself that I had seen during our 34 years together. She did not live her best life, and instead of setting her spirit free, she bound it to control, manipulation and gross, childish, unresolved need. It was sad and hard to watch.

On the other hand, I had a very close friend who was just the opposite. He had illness after illness and the sicker he got, the more loving he was, much like the person I just lost recently. That friend had been famous as an actor, lived well and made people happy. He was not focused on his losses, but his spiritual accomplishments and gains. With diabetes and heart problems, toward the end, after coming out of a coma, I spoke with him about his difficulties and was sad that he had been through so much. He simply said, "Baby, I didn't get here by accident. I made choices. I smoked and drank - a lot - and hung out and did what I wanted to do all those years ago, and I had a good time. A really good time, you can believe that! Just because I stopped some years later didn't mean the effects would stop too. So now, I'm going to enjoy this part too. It is all about life and living all of it. So I'm fine!" And he meant it.

So while I don't mourn for a soul that has left us, because I am certain that that actually is not possible as we all live on, I do mourn those in confusion or those who have been caught short on developing a true understanding of what is going on here. The saddest thing to watch to me is a waffling spirit who is unsure of God's actual presence, or one who has no understanding of the greater scheme of things and thus is unclear as to what is our right to do; what needs to be our focus; and what power we actually have, or not. That is where the difference lies in this matter of physical death. Getting a clear, often non-dogmatic idea of what we must accomplish before we leave here, and how our last actions are a reflection of what we have learned while here. There will be tests, even to the end. And even though pass or fail, we may still leave this plane, if we can express that we are learning and have more to learn, we might be granted the time to do so. If not, all is well because we will have a new lesson and more time to get all that we should know. So I think the key to dying well, is living well and being the best spirit that we can be, in or out of a physical body. In that way, we always set our spirit free!