COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD!

This wasn't immediately explained to me here, but I've recently discovered that there are many, many levels to "the place" I am in. The reality that one experiences in any given level can be quite different from another. One may be very similar to a physical existence, while another, higher level may be one of pure consciousness. The higher levels begin to get into an area where, as I've mentioned before, the limitations of language become an obstacle which restrict my ability to provide adequate descriptions.

I've also recently learned that I am still in a very basic, elementary level here. I have had glimpses into some others, but I'm told that it will be quite some time before my consciousness expands to the point where I am able to fully experience some of these other realities as a resident. So, regarding our "purpose", there is an immediate purpose, which is to simply carry out the duties you are assigned, and to learn and grow a little bit at a time. I'm sure there is a much higher purpose beyond that, that becomes known as one makes his/her way through these various levels, but you will have to ask a higher source than me to get a complete answer to that question.

There are several names that describe where I am, depending on how specific one wants to get. These names don't have words as you think of them, but are referred to with a sort of uhh....vibration or frequency which resonates within one's consciousness and is understood from one soul to the next. The names have meanings like "home" or "home on the way to a greater understanding" for the immediate reality I am in. There are also names for the greater reality which encompasses all of the levels I have previously mentioned. Those names are synonymous to words like "universe" "infinity" or even "heaven". There is also a distinction between terms for describing an individual's state of consciousness as opposed to their surroundings.

And...I'm sorry, what was your other question? Oh, homes...food...Well, we don't exactly live in houses as you think of them, since there's no real need for shelter from the elephants. Again, there are different realities, some being very tangible, like your world, but there isn't the sense of property ownership or anything like that...Excuse me, did I say "elephants" a while back? I meant "elements". Anyway, where I'm at, it is common for souls to surround themselves with things that make them more comfortable. Myself, I have a lot of those velvet Elvis paintings and artwork depicting dogs playing poker and shooting pool. Some of the others here think it's tacky, but if they don't like it that's just too bad.

Regarding food, one of the things I really like about being dead is the freedom from the burden of hunger. While I enjoyed food as a living person, there were many times that it was simply a hassle. Shopping, cooking, washing dishes, going to the bathroom...all those things really control your life a lot when you stop and think about it. If one chooses to, in the hereafter, one can still experience earthly senses like taste and smell, which are associated with food. There are even gardens here where many things are grown. We just don't have a dependency on it, and there isn't that whole digestive process. The need for toilet paper is completely eliminated. Pretty neat, huh? Oh, and if you're a carnivore, you're going to find that you'll need to go through a period of adjustment here.

This is another one of those things where the answer is different for everyone. In many cases there are two people who meet and spend the rest of their lives together literally until death do they part. These souls are normally reunited in the afterlife and their bond is, in most cases, even stronger than what they experienced in the earth plane, since they are then free of many of the trivialities that may have caused friction between them in their earth lives like "why don't you ever put the toilet seat down...", etc. On the other hand, many of the challenges we face on earth that allow us to grow closer to someone there are, if not eliminated at least modified in the hereafter, so there are cases where people who were very close on earth can grow apart as their souls develop along their individual, slightly diverging paths. Sometimes death can open your eyes to new things, and you may find that the person you thought you would be with forever has been merely a companion along the way.

I think your question has to do with what we normally consider "soul mates". In some cases we do meet our soul mate on earth, and in other cases we meet someone who seems to be our soul mate, but after some years together, we can grow apart from that person, or maybe one person stops growing and the other moves on...there are so many different situations, so many possibilities. I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, the fact that I was greeted by my main guide, or guardian angel when I arrived here. There was a sense that I had met someone who I had known a long time, someone who knew me very well, and indeed that was the case, although it certainly wasn't a romantic situation. What you will find here, regardless of your experiences on earth, is a strong bond to usually more than just one other soul. As far as eternity goes, I guess you could say there are souls who could be together forever, but we haven't really arrived at the end of forever yet, so I guess we don't really know, do we?

As I have also mentioned, there are different dimensions or realities that we experience as we grow here and some of these realities take us further away from our attachments to our gender and our sexual orientation on earth. There comes a point where we are no longer male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, masculine or feminine. This is a little frightening to most of us who are new here, because we are usually comfortable with the roles we have been playing, so we stick with those identities for quite some time in the hereafter. In time, as I understand it, we learn to become free of those attachments, but can return to them as we choose. This seems to me that it takes us away from the concept of romance as we know it, and I guess that is the scary part. I think most of us will agree that our romantic experiences on earth are the moments that we savor the most and, with the exception of the aforementioned Heaven's Gaters, I don't think anyone is too anxious to give that up in pursuit of some ultimate, ambiguous spiritual truth. Some of the religious leaders here, and where you are, will tell you that coming to know God is greater than any romantic encounter we can experience. But does there necessarily have to be a conflict there? This is one of the things that I don't fully understand yet, since I'm not as "highly developed" as some beings. I'm told that this is what makes me suitable for communicating with you through this site- the fact that I'm still closer to most of you with regards to my development than I am to souls who have gone much further. I wonder if some of those souls have lost touch with what it feels like to be human. Maybe as one develops it becomes less important to be so "human", but that is hard for me to comprehend. Perhaps I'll know in time.

As far as my own personal soul mate, I'm convinced it's either singer Shawn Colvin or actress Mary Stuart Masterson, although we've never met and neither has any idea that I exist. I think I fell in love with Mary when I saw the movie Chances Are, a very funny film about reincarnation, also starring Ryan O'Niel and Cybil Sheppard. Mary was absolutely adorable.

I'll have to tell you up front that neither I, nor anyone else here that I've consulted with, has a definite answer to your question. There may be an answer to that, but I don't know what it is.

If this were simply a disease that kills people quickly and painlessly, I think we would be less concerned, since we are all going to die eventually anyway. But not only does AIDS take away lives prematurely, it does so very slowly, with a great deal of pain and suffering for the victim and his/her loved ones.

I can tell you that a great deal of work goes on here regarding not only medical matters like this, but also technological and other advancements. These discoveries eventually make their way to your world through inspiration, where humans are used as a sort of receiving vessel for certain ideas. Even something as simple as writing a song is often done this way. The knowledge for this vaccine exists, but it is not for most of us to know exactly when and how this will find its way to your reality. From what I know, certain events have to take place before others can come about, and this is one of those kind of things.

Actually, at my humble level, I'm still working on a lot of personal themes that I won't bore you with. As I grow beyond that, however, I'll gradually be more involved in projects that are designed to benefit mankind or help individuals in one way or another to a greater degree than whatever I might be accomplishing on this site.

You know, it's interesting to find out how much you can learn from your one life on earth. (And so far, I have yet to find any real indication that there is anything more than the one life.) A lot of what you're experiencing in your life happens beneath the surface of your awareness, as I'm sure you're aware. (Ironic isn't it?) But you are like one giant sponge or tape recorder, taking it all in, and while you are alive you can't even begin to comprehend all the levels of meaning of your experiences and your interactions with others. There are many moments you will have while you are alive when you glimpse a lot of this, but when you arrive here, you will be given much more of a chance to look under every stone, along every path you walked in your life, to examine the infinite possibilities of what your life never was and what it could have been.

The point of what I'm saying is, I'm recommending to everyone to go out and experience as much as you possibly can, because it gives you so much more material to work with when you get here. You can only glimpse a fraction of the significance of your experiences while you are there. I especially recommend trying as many new experiences as you can, regardless of how much you think you've already done, or how pointless it may seem at the time.

One of the great exercises I've been given the opportunity to do here is to play out my life using a number of different options, based on decisions I'd made while I was alive. What if I'd made some of those decisions differently? What would have happened then? Here you get a chance to find out.

Regardless of how interesting it can be, nobody wants to spend too much time in self-examination. Indeed, there comes a point where it ceases to be entertaining or productive. That's why a significant portion of our time is also spent in learning about the human race in general, with regards to certain themes in history and the development of our species. One of the real critical issue that many of us are examining has to do with the possible extinction of mankind versus its potential to transcend the threats imposed upon it. Will the human race ultimately survive disease and the ecological disasters that earth is experiencing? This has yet to be determined, and our species is in a race with time where this is concerned. This is one of the major projects that souls on this side are working on, although my own activities in this area are somewhat limited right now. The truth is I'm not much help in this area yet, at least until I get a little further along with my own development.

So, I'm probably in more of a learning phase here, as opposed to being extremely productive or useful to anyone. This site is actually one of the few truly productive things I do. Sad, isn't it? A lot of this learning takes place in group environments, much like college classrooms. Many of the people of a particular generation find themselves together in the hereafter, and discover that they have a lot of the same things to learn, hence we are often grouped together in these learning projects. Again, I should devote some time to this in the diary section of this site, since this answer is getting so long-winded that I've now forgotten your original question. I hope I've answered it.

If you're referring to participating in those sports or watching them live, there's very little of that, from what I've seen. When I was a teenager I loved racing motocross, and I was absolutely certain that Heaven must be a place full of motorcycles and racetracks and huge garages with sparkling clean floors with the obligatory calendars hanging on the walls depicting scantily clad women holding power tools. My views changed as I got older, of course, but when I arrived here I wondered how many of the things that we enjoyed on earth would still be possible in the afterlife.

What I learned was that a lot of our activities on earth that we enjoy are things we do that give us certain physical sensations. In many cases, a lot of pleasure is derived from simply being able to refine our skill at something, and being able to put that skill to a test. This is all great while you're alive, but for the most part it's done simply to amuse yourself. When you arrive here, you may still want to do some of those things, and you may be given the opportunity to. You will very quickly find, however, that a lot of those sensations seem empty and meaningless, and you will feel a calling to do more than just amuse yourself. You may even experience this while you're alive, but unless you find other activities that raise your consciousness to a different level, you may continue to return to enjoying a lot of the same activities.

Please don't misunderstand me. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a stock car race or a boxing match or a monster truck rally. If you enjoy it, then enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about it and don't try to be something you're not. But don't be surprised if your activities and interests undergo some evolving when you get here. And if you feel those changes happening while you're still alive, then let it happen.

Another reason that it's not done too frequently is just that it's so damn difficult to put out that kind of concentration. It's a weird process, from what I've been told, that's equivalent to rearranging your entire molecular structure and forcing yourself to sort of vibrate at a different frequency. Most dead people who try it can't hold it for that long. To a certain degree, I experience a similar thing doing this web page. I have to focus my energies on a different dimension that I'm not entirely comfortable with, so I'm not able to write huge volumes of material at any one time, and very often I need to take long breaks between my writings. I'm often surprised to see how much time has passed when I return to this- often a week or two, and I'm sure a lot of you are wondering what's taking me so long to answer your questions.

When I first began this page, the realities I experienced as a living individual on earth were still fresh in my mind. In fact, this reality here in the afterlife was all so new, yet still familiar and comfortable. But now, I am often struck with the feeling that trying to describe the afterlife to you seems somewhat pointless. I mean, you are all going to be here sooner or later anyway, and you have all been here before, you're just afflicted with temporary amnesia while you're doing your time there right now. So, yes, you are exactly right in your suspicions about my dilema.

How long can these things last? Indefinitely. Anything you can do to make it stop? In most cases, no, but I understand that in some situations peaceful resolutions have worked themselves out. There are far too many varying situations for me to give an answer to them all, but I'm curious to know what you are having to deal with.

So if you don't accept Christ as your personal savior is there hope for you? Is Jesus who he says he is? Is everything in the bible the gospel truth? You're really putting me on the spot here, and this is where the censors come in. Let me just say that not EVERYTHING in the bible is exactly, literally true, but you're not going to go wrong by subrscibing to the Christian faith and the concept of salvation and so forth. Just try to keep an open mind and some tolerance towards other faiths.

Sorry if that answer seemed a little watered-down, but it's what I was left with after it went through the approval of my overseers here. Thanks for taking the time to submit a question, though; I haven't gotten one in weeks. Hey, gotta go, here comes another question...

It's a natural reaction when one has recently lost a loved one, to want to still speak with that person, and to reach out in any way possible to overcome the barriers that death places in our way. Unfortunately, this is usually not possible, for reasons I have alluded to elsewhere on this site. Rest assured that this is often what's best for you, as well as the recently departed. In fact, you can often hamper a soul's progress by devoting a lot of energy towards attempting to pull that person back towards you. Death is a natural part of the process. Let it happen and let the healing begin. I don't know of anyone on this side who contacts the living through a Ouija board, but that's not to say it hasn't been done. I just think that, more often than not, you're tapping into your own subconscious (a powerful and mysterious thing in and of itself), rather than establishing any real contact with the spirit world. And what if you contact some spirit you don't want to contact? And what if he turns into some kind of weird stalker kind of person and won't leave you alone?