The conquest of fear is one of the primary reasons for life on Earth. Without it, the doorway to the next primary lesson, that of unconditional love, remains closed.
Ask yourself, how many people fail to follow their true calling in life because of fear?
When people incarnate into this world, they leave behind an extensive soul family in the spirit realms. This family consists of the souls who, in the entire universe, are the most like them, the ones who are very close to their own wavelength. Leaving the camaraderie of this intimate group of friends can be an act of soul-wrenching self-sacrifice.
Often, the act of incarnation is not carried out alone. In fact, it is usual for others from the same soul family to incarnate at approximately the same time so that they will experience the issues of their own generation together. Careful plans are made ahead of time to ensure that key friendships will occur during these incarnations. One of the ways this can be done is to be born into the same physical family as brothers or sisters.
A spiritual entity enters this world through the body of a newborn baby, takes a deep breath, and promptly inherits amnesia! All of a sudden, they don’t know how to walk, talk, dress themselves, or drive to parties. All of those things come later.
Some simple functions are already present in the newly formed baby’s brain, such as the ability to cry, drink milk, and cry louder.
This almost total amnesia, combined with a brain’s focus upon the external senses, creates an environment where fears can potentially become enormous.
In fact, the human body on the physical plane of Earth is the perfect place to experience fear in a wide variety of forms… and to learn to overcome those fears by gaining inner strength.
Let’s face it. If someone were attuned to the higher spheres of the spirit world and saw themselves as a wise and powerful spirit who just happens to use a physical vehicle, then the opportunity for fear just wouldn’t be the same. The threat of losing their physical body would be no more fear-invoking than the threat of losing the car that they use for driving to work.
The fear of death today is all-pervasive. It is so ingrained in society that it gets avoided wherever possible. If death is mentioned, the subject is usually changed as quickly as possible.
The fear of death is fed by, not just one, but three powerful factors:
- A built-in, biological survival instinct
- Fear of losing the company of a dearly loved one
- Fear of the unknown Add these three factors together and this fear may seem insurmountable, but, taken one by one, these factors do become manageable.
Overcoming Fear
The survival instinct serves to keep people alert when dangers arise, so that they can respond quickly in order to preserve the lives of their physical bodies. If you were driving headlong towards an unfolding traffic accident, the sudden rush of adrenalin may feel like fear, but it is really a coping mechanism for self-preservation. Fear of losing a loved one can often be supplanted by simply wanting the best for them. If a loved one is dying of an incurable disease, it is probably better for them to suffer as little as possible from pain, confusion, and from the frustration of physical incapacity. It also helps to know something about the afterlife in which they will be living next.
Knowledge is the cure for fear of the unknown. The more people know about their eventual destination, the easier it is to rationally plan for it and to be sure that they have first reaped the intended benefits from their current life’s experiences.
Knowledge Starts Here
Some inroads have been made into knowledge of the afterlife by books that detail near-death experiences. Education also came via television from sensitives, such as John Edward, who channeled messages of assurance from departed loved ones.
In the 1980s there was an onrush of public interest in life-after-death experiences. This wave of wanting-to-know was triggered by Raymond Moody’s classic work, Life After Life, which revealed his study of more than a hundred people’s out-of-body experiences after their clinical deaths had occurred. Needless to say, all of these cases had been resuscitated from clinical death and returned to their physical bodies to tell the tale!
In the typical near-death experience, according to Moody, the person’s spirit consciousness experiences their passing through an energetic tunnel into a place of light, where they feel overjoyed by the uplifting life energy which fills that realm of existence. In this realm they typically meet a spirit guide, one who is often recognized as a close relative or friend who had passed on some years earlier.
The “tunnel towards the light” experience is the transference of the person’s spirit body from the physical realm of Earth to the next realm of higher (finer) density, the afterlife. The human spirit, or astral body, resonates most readily to the frequency of the spirit realm, so it tends to transfer there as soon as it has been released from the confines of the physical body.
While in the spirit realm, people notice that any infirmities of their physical bodies no longer exist, as their physical vehicles have been left behind. This brings a great sense of freedom to anyone who has suffered any debilitating, degenerative disease of the physical body in their final years upon the physical plane.
Young Again!
Other observations typically made by a person in the afterlife include the fact that their spirit body has not aged like their physical body. Unimpeded by the aging of their physical body, their spirit body appears to be in the prime of life, just like they were at around 28 years of age.
Their ability to float from place to place is also a new experience. Their spirit bodies are made of light-density, etheric energy-based material, as opposed to physical bodies, which are made of dense, electric energy-based material. Spirit bodies are usually referred to as being non-physical; however, quasi-physical might be a better term. Spirit bodies do have a physical-like form and feel solid to other spirits, but they are quite malleable and can be easily shape-shifted.
As etheric energy immediately responds to mental pressure, it takes just a little concentration for a person to levitate their body up into the air and travel forward in any desired direction.
If they want to be imaginative, they can soar high in the sky just like an eagle. Then, they can take this adventure even further, and actually shape-shift into the appearance of an eagle. That is, an eagle which still has their human eyes. As the eyes are the windows to the soul, they never change and always reveal a person’s true, inner essence.
Then, in a sudden shift of focus, the near-death traveler realizes that, even though their physical body has almost died, this is not the time for their physical life to end. So they return to their physical body just as it gets successfully resuscitated. Their experience of conscious, remembered contact with people in a world of higher frequency consciousness affects them profoundly. Many become more contented with their lives. For the first time, they may see real purpose behind the paths that they have been following throughout their lives, never before suspecting that their own soul plan or intent is behind that path.
Soul Families
In 1996, Michael Newton published another quantum leap in afterlife research, Journey of Souls. As a hypnotherapist, he had reached even further into the deepest reaches of his clients’ super-conscious memories. From this, he assembled a composite picture of the afterlife experience, the phenomenon of soul groupings or soul families, the part that spirit guides play in the afterlife, and how and why people choose another incarnation for their next experience upon the physical realm.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Newton’s research is his revelation as to how people gather together with their soul family in the spirit realms to learn lessons as a close-knit group. Once they have unraveled the lessons of their just-completed life on the physical plane, they spend endless happy hours, days and years with their dearly beloved soul group, working on the challenges of life on earth and the possibilities of what they might gain from their next experiences upon the physical realm.
When you or a loved one is faced with an impending release from the physical body, remember this. Nothing is worth fear! Nothing ever happens that wasn’t pre-planned at the person’s soul level of consciousness. The fact that you or they don’t remember the plan is no reason to become fearful.
Old Friends Come Back To Visit
When a departed one comes back to visit you in your waking state, their presence will flow into your being and remind you of the closeness that you once shared in each other’s physical company. Be aware that this is their way of saying hello. If you succumb to the temptation to remember how much you miss them, and break into tears, then you will have, unfortunately, messed up their whole visit!
Instead, tell them in your thoughts – which they can “hear” perfectly well – that you’ll see them tonight when you fall asleep and leave your own physical body for the night. We often meet with friends and family members who have passed on when we visit their world at night.
The only difference between sleep and passing away is that, in the morning, you return to your physical body. Memories of dreams dissolve quickly after you awake. If you write down your dreams as soon as you awake, then you will find it much easier to preserve their memory. Many dreams of the morning are just “house cleaning” within your consciousness. The stresses of the previous days get jumbled up together, translated into symbols, and turned over in your mind to be more easily reconciled.
The most valuable dreams to write down are ones where you become lucid enough to awake in the middle of a dream that seems particularly vivid. Those are the dreams where you were “out there” far enough to have been in contact with old friends in the spirit realms, and not just hovering close to your physical body untangling the stresses of the day. The deeper dreams of the night, the ones where you soared high into the spirit world, can be recalled by just intending to do so while in a deep and peaceful meditation session.
When it comes to issues of life and the afterlife, always have faith in the flow of life. There is a deeply, inner-planned synchronicity which unfolds through every important event in the life. There is a self-made plan unfolding through everyone who has ever graced this physical earth with their wise and powerful spirits.
And, remember, the amnesia was just a part of the game!
Owen Waters is the author of the ground-breaking compilation of deep insights, Spiritual Metaphysics: Answers to the Great Mysteries of Life.
