Caring For the Newly Dead
Aug. 8th, 2023 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteele
We live in a spiritual Dark Age. Mainstream religions have wandered well into the ballpark of materialistic atheism. Materialistic atheism has almost no tools to deal with human death, as it is in complete denial of the afterlife. Because of this lack of tools, funerals have become yet another expensive, corporatized, dehumanized rite of passage. To die is to pass through a depersonalized, one-size-fits-all grist mill for making money off the bereaved.
Our age's terror at the prospect of the yawning memory hole of death manifests in psychotic symptoms. Nobody is supposed to look old and death is better hidden and unobserved. The elderly are warehoused so they can be forgotten in a kind of grift oubliette. Families are atomized, begging the question, What is the point of having children if you cannot expect them to care for you in your old age?
Many Ways to Die
Though there are many ways to die, there are two main types of death: expected or unexpected. Overall, expected deaths are better for all parties because there is a chance to prepare. Unexpected deaths are where things can get stuck. Stuckness occurs in situations where death occurs by murder, heart attack, stroke, accident, suicide, or when an aged or infirm person has not made their peace.
One way or the other, when we die we see parts of the astral plane fabric that are not visible in normal, physical life. This is where the reporting of a bright, white light comes from in the NDE or Near Death Experience. Unless you have gone out of the way and taken special pains to be a horrible person, chances are you will see the white light and be beckoned by its warmth and acceptance. I fully expect to see the white light. Though my life has been far from perfectly-lived, as it stands I have tried for many years to be a better person than I was yesterday, if only by the slightest amount. Once you are received by the white light, there is a another reception on the non-physical side. From what the dead have told me, we are received by our assigned spirit guides and by the HGAs or Holy Guardian Angels of our loved ones, including pets, places, and in some cases, objects. This is why dying brings a feeling of going home, even if your Meatworld home was transient or a tar-paper shack on the side of a garbage dump. You are briefly greeted by guides who comfort you and brought to a place of intimate familiarity, love, and genuine rest before being dunked into the Underworld.
We All Go to Hell, Regardless of Hand Baskets
The Underworld is my catch-all term for the kind of non-eternal hell or purgatory every human on the meat plane must go through before reincarnating into a new form. The concept of hell and heaven is where most mainstream religions go absurdly and spectacularly wrong. Buddhists obsess about avoiding the incarnation process altogether, hoping and trying instead to escape the wheel of meat-plane cycling to skip the line to a subtle and masterful non-physical state. They are not the only ones who fixated on escape: Aztecs and Mayans made the avoidance of our current demonic, materialistic age into an art, absorbing village after village primarily to attain victims for blood sacrifice. The point of the sacrifices was seemingly to keep the priestly class out of incarnation and to prevent the world from becoming what it is now. Christians misinterpret the Underworld cycle as an eternal pit of torture and pain for the unrepentant wicked. The only alternative in this binary is an equally unbalanced assumption that they will sit for untold trillions of millennia at the right hand of Jesus based on the judgement of the works of a single human lifetime. Only Hindus, who can proudly boast the world's most ancient and enduring religion, see the reincarnation process with a sense of balance. Even they err by playing into the caste system, which has horrific repercussions for almost anyone who has ever believed in it. The haughty presumptions that arise from belief in the caste system are kissing cousins to boneheaded Quranic and Biblical literalism.
As I have mentioned in the past, an entity once shared with me that the grace with which we accept our judgements and descent into the Underworld determines how much bounce we will gain before going into our next incarnation. My childhood as Baby Kimberly was terrible, and not because of anything my parents did or where and how I grew up. My childhood was awful mostly because of the anger and sorrow I failed to resolve from my previous life. In my most recent past life, I was a wealthy but embittered widow who lost her two sons in World War I. Her unhappiness leaked into this life. Many of her emotional issues were still on the table for resolution well into my current lifetime.
Once we have spent time in the Underworld going through the nasty process of sorting through most of our mea culpas and stupid crap we did that hurt our fellow sentient beings while in physical incarnation, we bounce back up to the higher astral plane in order to get ready for our next incarnation. Contrary to popular mainstream religious belief and based upon what dead people have told me, we do not get a choice whether or not any part of these processes happen. We cannot choose incarnation any more than a fish can choose to live in water. As the world ebbs from its current peak, some souls will stay out of incarnation for longer periods and others will be reincarnated as animals. Of course I could be wrong.
Despite the way we have been trained to look at it, death is a good thing. That said, ending your life prematurely can have dire consequences depending on the intentions behind the action. At any rate, it does not speed up the resolution of any of your problems except on the most superficial level.
They're Still Here: How the Newly Dead Interact
I operate under the assumption that the newly dead can still see us and interact with us on the astral and etheric planes despite being divorced from the physical plane. When my friend died of cancer in his sixties, he visited me during my daily Sphere of Protection and said that from his end of the astral, it looked like a fireworks show. There is nothing strange about talking to the newly dead; in fact, it would be better if we all learned to talk with them. There is also nothing strange about a dead person informing their loved one they have died. This is usually called a haunting but I think this is far too dramatic a term. The facts on the ground are the etheric body sticks around for most of the time there is still a corpse. Cremation severs the link and immediately dissolves the etheric body. When I die, I am specifically asking in advance not to be embalmed because I feel preservation of the corpse ties the astral and etheric bodies to Meatworld for far longer than necessary. When I die, I expect to hang around Meatworld until I am either cremated or rotted in the ground from being buried. Freed of my physical body, I will wander about visiting any friends or relatives I have left. If they are used to interactions with spirits of dead people as I am, I will try to give them an etheric sign of my presence, such as a candle burning brighter or the scent of citrus, mint, roses, or incense. If they are a normal person who gets freaked out by occult phenomena (likely) I will only observe and keep my energy to myself.
Once my etheric and physical body separate anywhere from a few days to a few months after my death, I expect to be led by my spirit guides and my own higher self as I transit out of Meatworld and my old incarnation as Kimberly Steele. If my experience as a dead person is a typical one, and I believe it will be, we can use it to inform us how to help the newly dead find their way in absence of their physical and etheric bodies.
Candles and Flame
Just as regular incarnated humans are drawn to burning campfires, fireplaces, and flame, candles draw both non-embodied humans and spirits. Lighting a candle for a dead person has the same effect as giving them a powerful flashlight on a dark road. Candlelight vigils should be done for any newly dead person in the spirit of helping them through the immediate afterlife process. Candles burned at the place the newly dead person loved and/or considered home or best: they act as amplifiers of comforting energy and draw spirit friends to the corresponding area on the astral plane.
Flowers
Regardless of whether the person liked flowers while alive, fresh flowers are etheric plane improvers that act similarly to candles; that is to say they are amplifiers of comforting energy that bridge the etheric into the astral. Once again, flowers provide a temporary energy source that draws benevolent helper entities. What we think of as flowers are no more and no less than magical herbs. Herbalists know that herbs have the power to drive away malevolent energy via banishing and draw helpful energy. The result is greater illumination and purification on the path out of incarnation for the newly dead person.
Music
Music is an extremely potent purification tool and is very effective when assisting the newly dead to connect with their higher selves and helpful spirit guides on the astral plane. Like flowers and flame, music repels malevolent entities and provides a bright spot on the astral plane so the newly dead can rally and prepare for their next steps. It's especially powerful and helpful to play the music the dead person loved in life, even if it isn't the most agreeable music to the still living. While playing the newly dead person's favorite music, send the intention of gratitude for their time in physical incarnation, no matter how brief. Even unborn babies have "favorite" music that sensitive mothers can determine while they're still in utero. While sending gratitude, also send wishes for their smooth and easy transition through the Gates until you see them again.
Prayer
Prayer is the most important tool we have in our arsenal for helping the newly dead. The goal of prayer is simple: we ask a deity who is older, wiser, and smarter than we are to help with something they know a great deal about while we ourselves know very little. In other words, we do what is perfectly logical. The more connected the newly dead person is to the Divine, the easier their transition out of Meatworld will be. The reason it is tremendously important to live a virtuous life by being generous, kind, compassionate, fair, modest, diligent, and moderate is because living the Word is far better than preaching it. Unfortunately, it is common among monotheists to abuse prayer as conversion cacomagic: they take any fledging connection they have with the Divine and use it to guilt trip and browbeat others into serving their specific God. This act is ironically Satanic and will likely earn them long stints in the Underworld where, as the Bible says, "they shall have their reward". Instead of telling others how to accept your version of Jesus or some other god into their hearts, you go first by connecting to a god and doing your level best to serve that god with humility and grace. Connection and discourse with the Divine drives out parasitic, opportunistic entities while affording glimpses of the afterlife process well before it is time to go to the afterlife.
Letting Go
As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, our civilization has a problem accepting death. We have a problem with divine grace and become dissonant when dealing with endings. Grace means not clinging to what once was and not pining after what was not meant to be. As far as I can tell, most of the dead move on fairly quickly -- a few days to a few months -- unless we compel them to stay with constant, intense, unrelenting grief. When you are tempted to wallow in grief, light a candle and focus on the moments and legacies of the person, pet, or house that were given to you and ruminate about how your life is better because they were there for you in this world. By focusing on the good and adding gratitude to the mix, you improve and sublimate their journey as well as your own, no matter where they are. When you see them again, and I believe you will, they will thank you for it.
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Date: 2023-08-08 11:26 pm (UTC)I lost my last 2 grandparents last year (both suspiciously soon after receiving a certain pharmaceutical), and every night for 40 days, I lit a candle and some incense and said prayers to my gods for them. 40 days is the time prescribed in the Tibetan book of the dead for how long it takes the soul to move over after death. Weirdly, my parents seemed to just want to get the funerals arranged and move on with their lives. They never speak about their parents now, and change the topic quickly if I bring them up.
For what it's worth though, I'm pretty sure my last incarnation was as a female spy born somewhere in Eastern Europe after WW2 and who died in her 30s in East Germany in the early 1980s, shot in a basement somewhere - she did not die well. I believe her family was also killed when she was young.
I visited Berlin once, and it brought up some strange emotions. Nostalgia (especially the GDR museum), sadness and dread were the main ones, though at the time I had no idea why.
I was born into this life in the late 1980s, and up until I was 20, I was dogged by the persistent belief that I and my parents were about to die soon, and had a general mental attitude of paranoid hypervigilance (I dealt with this via video games to emotionally detach, which was not a great strategy, in hindsight) Every birthday, I was kind of surprised to have made it another year. It may have also given me my inbuilt mistrust of authority and ability to circumvent the rules, whilst still presenting a "good citizen" outward appearance.
I think I also died relatively young (40s) as a British airman in WW2, presumably somewhere over Germany/Eastern Europe (as JMG has said before that where you die can affect where you are reincarnated). However, before the war, I was living it up in the 1920s and 30s as a pilot flying around the world, including some time in Egypt, which was presumably why I was obsessed by all things ancient Egyptian as a child in this lifetime.
There's a few other ones I'm not sure about, but I get hints of being around in the French revolution (as an ordinary Parisian woman caught up in the chaos - I've been to France generally, and Paris specifically, and I couldn't wait to leave) and possibly as a US army scout on the American frontier in the early 1800s (he also died young, though from something stupid like frostbite or tetanus, so I hold no ill feelings about the beauty of the American midwest) Going further back, I think I may have been a Japanese shinobi in the 1600s before they were all rounded up and killed (noticing a theme here?), a Japanese wandering monk in the 1700s and possibly a Portuguese sailor in the late 1500s who visited Japan, as I got a real sense of 'home' when I visited Portugal some years ago, and I've always wanted to (re?)visit Japan. (And was going to in 2020, but then some stuff happened... And now it's gone from being just "very" expensive to "unbelievably" expensive)
Interestingly, I absolutely hate flying in this lifetime (and yes, I realise the irony in the places I've visited above - my parents took me on holiday each year as a child, and every time I'd throw up for a week beforehand in anxiety about flying. I've not been on a plane in 7 years now), and the thought of guillotines practically made me hyperventilate as a child, so I think we carry over a surprising amount of emotional baggage between lifetimes, particularly about the manner of our deaths.
Reincarnation is now basically an unrecognised scientific fact as well. There's an organisation called the Bigelow Institute who research it, and they have documented over 2000 cases that indicate reincarnation (eg. knowledge that a child would have no other way to know, etc). They have some great downloadable essays of evidence on their website. The response from the scientific community is "Well your methods and findings are unrefutable, but we don't have any theoretical basis for how reincarnation could work, so we will reject all the evidence". Much like "structured water" (read: homeopathy), "low-temperature nuclear reactions" (read: cold fusion) and radionics machines, if it doesn't fit in the current model, there is no place for it - evidence be damned! Unfortunately it's a pretty common story with so-called Science these days, as the past 3 years have shown with stunning clarity. Trying to go up against the establishment with facts is a fool's game though, you're better off just circumventing it - in the same way that Florida water is marketed as a "cologne".
It's a shame (or not, if you believe as I do, that suppression of this knowledge is intentional - the original versions of the Bible make reference to reincarnation in such a way that it was seemingly common knowledge, but later revisions edited it out), as since I came to believe in reincarnation, I lost all fear of death. Not in the sense of going out of my way to do dangerous stuff (I don't really want to have to learn to walk, talk and read all over again in a hurry), but taking the long view of "how will this action affect my next life?". I, for one, hope to survive at least long enough that the population starts dropping, so that I reincarnate when the rubble of the long descent has stopped bouncing and industrial civilisation has finally collapsed. Sounds kind of selfish, I know, but I don't really feel like growing up in either a failing techno-dictatorship megacity or a savage hinterland getting hunted by drones and warbands.
Caste systems are a very ugly interpretation of reincarnation though, I agree. If we assume that you "did your time" in the Afterlife, why should you be punished further in your next life? And from the higher-caste perspective, wouldn't treating people like trash just mean you get to be reincarned as lower-caste so that you can feel what it's like? Seems very short-sighted.
Mr. Crow
Ps. How were the Aztec sacrifices supposed to keep the priests out of reincarnation? Just by accruing lots of bad karma to stay in the Bad Place for longer? If so, that seems like... an odd strategy.
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Date: 2023-08-09 03:28 pm (UTC)40 days and nights strikes me as the perfect amount of time to keep a vigil for a dead person: in the future, I'm going to use that. 40 days pops up several times in the Christian Bible as being significant, plus Lent is 40 days -- or technically 46, but whatever, close enough. My husband wasn't sure how he would process the death of his parents but it turned out he wasn't all that broken up upon it. He wasn't close with them though. I remember being closer to my grandmother than anyone else was. I don't think the rest of the family was as heartbroken when she died in my teens. She was happy to go though; she was ready.
The thing about modern Scientism (I have a hard time calling it science when it doesn't do anything even remotely similar to what science used to do) is that it is always forced into the Procrustean bed of whatever Scientism wants to believe. When I talk about speaking with the dead in some of my TikTok videos, I get trolls who try to shoot me down by demanding scientific evidence for what I believe in. What was fascinating on one of the posts about suicide were counter-trolls who dared the trolls to prove it to themselves LOL, and one who skewered Scientism by saying any compelling evidence I presented would be quickly dismissed and hidden because that's how "science" works these days.
Maybe your killer instinct (I don't think I ever had time to reply to that comment on my "I was a Scottish serial killer" essay, sorry) is from your time as a spy. Or maybe a leftover from one of the other lifetimes. I do notice that my childhood obsessions had their roots in past lives.
My husband is an atheist/agnostic and isn't sure what to think of past lives, but he has a weird affinity for (Eastern) Indian culture and people that I believe is from his past lives. If he had any talent for language -- he does not -- Hindi or Sanskrit would be his first and second choice.
I didn't know that about the Bible! Do you know of any specific books on that subject that talk about reincarnation myth being suppressed?
I'm guessing that the old Aztecs and Mayans thought if they built up enough "released" etheric plane energy via sacrifice, the offering would please the gods into parting the timeline so they could escape incarnation. Maybe it actually worked and that set of people diverged to a different timeline. I kind of doubt it though. I think people who do strategies of incarnation avoidance end up in worse shape than if they had just left well enough alone, much like drinking heavily to avoid your sorrows makes you into an alcoholic with the karma of an alcoholic, no matter how good you are at handling liquor.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-09 11:40 pm (UTC)Yep, Scientism is the correct word for it, it's a belief system now, not a methodology or toolkit. But it's a godless one, and so has no inbuilt error-correction. This will likely be its imminent downfall, as it's completely open to demonic (or just terrestrial) takeover, as it cannot comprehend that it could be wrong and cannot see its own blind spots. Covid is just the start of this process, in my opinion.
I may also do a more detailed post one day about what I call "white man's magic", which is effectively an anti-magic that stops magic from working around it. For example, maybe the Native American Spirit dancers really were bulletproof... but not when facing white settlers with their anti-magic. Ever seen X-Men 3, with the character called Leech, who stops other mutants' powers from working? It would explain why even the well-researched examples of cold fusion, homeopathy, etc, or any other technology based upon the subtle senses seems to fail in the presence of hardened Scientism sceptics - they make it fail simply by their presence.
The Tibetan book of the dead, or the Bardõ, to give its proper name, is a really good read. It goes into what you've mentioned on how to make the proper preparations for the dying and rituals for the recently passed, but also basically states that everyone goes to hell for a bit, unless you escape the cycle of samsara via enlightenment. Some of it lays it on a bit thick, such as how many millenia of suffering killing an ant will get you, etc, but overall it's interesting.
Book-wise, sorry, I can't remember the exact ones, as they were mentioned on the podcast "Everything Imaginable" (which I'd recommend) whilst I was driving home, so I couldn't note them down, and now I can't find the episodes! From a quick search, this book from the 70s seems to be on the same topic though: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reincarnation-Christianity-Rebirth-Christian-Thought/dp/0835605019
The authors interviewed on the podcast (there were 3 separate ones on separate episodes who were all doing basically the same thing) went back to the earliest copies of the Bible they could find, which were in Hebrew, and started translating them literally, word-for-word (rather than transliterating them into modern English, which is more subjective) and came across a lot of mentions of prophets being literal rather than figurative reincarnations of previous prophets. There also seem to be a lot of references to mysterious "sky people" as well, which slowly got transliterated into a singular "God", but that's a topic for another time. I'll do some digging and get back to you if I can find the specific books though.
I also remember JMG saying how you die can potentially affect your mental make-up in your next life - I posted before about the Aspergers-y mental traits I had when I was younger, and my lack of what is known as "hot" empathy (where you actually feel what someone else feels, rather than "cold" empathy, where you can understand what someone else feels, but don't feel it yourself. It won't surprise you to learn that psychopaths score high on the latter and low on the former) might be the kind of brain damage you'd expect from being shot in the back of the head. But I imagine a few lifetimes as an assassin and/or spy would develop the same characteristics. Language-wise, I took to German very easily when learning it at school, and was also good at French, I just didn't like it. And I started learning a little Japanese before I was going to go to Japan in 2020, and read books about Japanese culture - all the stuff that was supposed to be 'weird' to a Westerner I found perfectly logical though!
I also don't know if you know of the Myers-Briggs test, but I am an INTJ - there was a discussion about this on JMG's covid posts a while back, and *loads* of people on there were INTJ, and none of them got the jab. However, INTJs only make up around 5% of the population, but their 'superpower' is that they are totally immune to peer pressure and have high critical/lateral thinking abilities. I remember this from university drinking games - I just said "This is stupid" and refused to participate, or pretended to drink, or just subtly switched my vodka for water (drunk people are easy to trick). It's also kind of hard to exclude someone as a punishment when they actively dislike being around other people. I've seen a load of memes where INTJ is basically characterised as the 'assassin' archetype as well, blending into civilised society, yet following their own secret missions and objectives.
There's some occult teachings (Dion Fortune in particular goes into this) that people don't reincarnate randomly, and nor do they experience *everything*, but just the lessons they need to learn, following their own "ray". It ties into the idea of soul clusters of similar souls moving through lifetimes. What this would mean is that one's core personality is not truly reset with each lifetime - it may vary somewhat, but based on the comparative similarities I've mentioned above, I would not suddenly expect my next life to be say, as a professional dancer, as that would not be on my ray. I know you shared your past lives before, and there were similarities over time, such as musical ability. I work with machines a lot better than people, and spy gadgets were a particular source of fascination for me as a child (fun fact: I always liked the character "Q" a lot better than James Bond in the movies. He made the fun gadgets and didn't get shot at!) Part of why I dislike the internet age so much is that everything is so *boring*. There's no need for an exciting laser pen to help you break into an office when you can just hack the laptop of an inept intern from another continent. Le sigh.
That's interesting about the etheric sacrifices to the Mayan/Aztec gods - maybe they instead got a karmic culmination in the sense of civilisation-ending plagues (it was actually a combo of 3 diseases - smallpox, measles and typhoid, which accounted for the 90% fatality rate, not a single virus) from the Conquistadors, in a "be careful what you wish for" sort of way. Kind of like the Final Destination films, where trying to escape your fate just ends up causing it (man, those films creeped me out as a teenager).
You may also note from my post above that I believe my most recent incarnations have followed on more or less immediately from each other. I think you wrote an essay a while ago about your soul feeling tired from the frequent incarnations. That is exactly how I feel, despite being reasonably young, healthy and active. I just want a break for a few centuries to work through and process things. I have asked my gods in advance not to come back for 1000 years when I die, but I don't know if this will be granted.
Mr. Crow
Ps. I went back and re-read the message I'd left on the Scottish essay, as I couldn't remember how crazy it came across. I guess it was maybe a '6' on the scale of 1-to-bananas. Creepily though, the picture you had of the oubliette for that essay - only a few days afterwards, I read about a scientific 'study' from the 70s in which monkeys were put in something very similar to that diagram for basically no reason other than to watch them suffer. It's one of the most horrible things I've read about for a while, so I won't send you a link, as you won't like it. The synchronicity of it unnerved me though. And again, evil Scientism.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 04:47 am (UTC)I will read the Tibetan Book of the Dead! It sounds interesting.
I used to be an INTJ and then something changed. I have no idea what Myers-Brigg classification I am now. But yeah, the assassin archetype I can totally dig, much because of my own checkered past lives. In my own case, I reincarnated all across Europe for a very long time before landing in the States in my past life as a wealthy widow.
Final Destination is good stuff! Yes, I can see the parallels. I would venture a guess that it was the Mayan and Aztec elites who were obsessed with skipping incarnation/preventing our demonic era. The regular people were probably just like you and me, just trying to live their lives and mind their own business.
I didn't think your comment on the There Will Be Blood essay was crazy in the slightest. You said "If you cross me, I will never forget it, and will get you from behind in the dark at some indeterminate point in the future and you'll never see it coming and no one will ever know, including you". I have thought those exact thoughts at many times.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 07:04 pm (UTC)Thank You.
Date: 2023-08-09 03:47 am (UTC)We did do a celebration of his life in December-- which he had written and composed himself years before-- so hopefully that was of some use to him.
My reaction is really really odd to me. I did all my grieving for him in the month or so before he died. After the celebration, thoughts of him have mostly gone out of my mind. Shouldn't I think of him more? When I do, it is a fond memory or something that I thank him for-- such as all those beautiful, leisurely summer vacations spent lounging in my bedroom with the air conditioner that he had put up in the window that June.
He was a very kind, giving, compassionate humanist who had very little use for "organized religion". He went to a Unitarian church most of his adult life, which really was a Godsend for him. Most of his friends were there. If anyone lived the Word he did. Unfortunately he succumbed to Coronamania in his last years, but this manifested as a terror that I would catch coronavirus-- "you're my only flesh and blood and I don't want to lose you!" So I would phone him every week to assure him I was still alive and fine.
I take great comfort in your statement that those who live the Word will have a better time of it.
- Cicada Grove
Re: Thank You.
Date: 2023-08-09 03:36 pm (UTC)Most of the holy people I have known did not go to church. And they certainly didn't waste any time trying to convince others of what they believed. I talk to dead people quite frequently and the religious ones have a worse time than the more atheistic ones because the religious do not get anything like what they are expecting. Atheists literally expect nothing and are often pleasantly surprised to find out they were wrong and that their guides and loved ones are ready to receive them on the other side. I have seen a great deal of dissonance when the dead Christian learns they must do a stint in the Underworld before reincarnating -- often, this is when they will contact me because they get upset about it! "What do you mean I don't get to sit at the right hand of Jesus forever and ever? But I was SAVED!"
no subject
Date: 2023-08-09 06:38 am (UTC)—Princess Cutekitten
no subject
Date: 2023-08-09 03:37 pm (UTC)Thank you
Date: 2023-08-09 07:18 am (UTC)Re: Thank you
Date: 2023-08-09 03:37 pm (UTC)Questions & ghost story
Date: 2023-08-09 08:13 pm (UTC)I have a few questions, if you feel like answering any, I would be most appreciative.
How long after death is lighting candles, playing music, or having flowers beneficial?
If we are not near the places the deceased considered home, are these practices still helpful?
To share:
When I was 12 my grandmother was in the hospital and doing poorly. My mum and grandfather left me alone while they went to visit her and do some errands.
Whike I was making myself a sandwich for lunch I had a flash of incite. I knew she had died, yet she was standing right behind me. I turned round and saw her. We talked for a bit. She gave me some advice and said goodbye.
She was very religious. She said death wasn't what she expected, and even though it was very early days (minutes), so far it was "just grand". She'd had a very hard life and had been very ill for a long time. She was quite happy to be free of it all. She was hoping to find Jesus and my deceased father. But even if she couldn't, she was still ready to "go adventuring".
When my mum and grandfather came home hours later they told me my grandmother had died around lunch time. No surprise to me.
I missed her, we were very close. But she'd been so happy and so thrilled for this next part of her existence, I found it hard to be sad.
I told a few people about what happened and they said I had just imagined it. Or dreamed it. It's weird that I "imagined" seeing her spirit right around the time she died and before anyone had told me she'd passed.
- Heloise
Re: Questions & ghost story
Date: 2023-08-10 09:09 pm (UTC)As for your questions:
How long after death is lighting candles, playing music, or having flowers beneficial?
40 days seems to be the number, as we have discussed upthread. It's a number mentioned in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it's mentioned several times in the Bible, and as MethylEthyl noted, it's a time period also used in the Orthodox church for various things. Give or take -- if it ends up being 36 days or 45 or whatever, no big deal. Lent is 46 days.
If we are not near the places the deceased considered home, are these practices still helpful?
Yes -- it honestly does not matter where actual "home" was. Home is a state of mind. I would compare it with Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. She must be able to picture her home in her imagination in order to actually go there.
Re: Questions & ghost story
Date: 2023-08-10 10:24 pm (UTC)Very interesting and I will them in mind next time someone passes.
Heloise
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Date: 2023-08-09 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 09:18 pm (UTC)As for the flowers and candles, I keep meaning to spruce up my office and studio space within my home in the same way.
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Date: 2023-08-11 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-12 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-12 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 10:28 pm (UTC)I think the Christianity of our future will be much smaller in numbers, and far more spiritually powerful, in practice. The modern age hasn't produced a lot of saints. I think that will change, and it'll be good for us.
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Date: 2023-08-11 01:37 am (UTC)As for my personal experience with death and reincarnation, I have also felt a sense of feeling like I came back into incarnation this life too quickly and far from willingly - I've often had generalized feelings of "not being ready yet" or "not being prepared yet", have unusually hostile feelings towards the common New Age idea of "you chose to incarnate here and now", was hyperlexic as a kid coupled with insisting on referring to myself in the third person straight up until first grade (I knew how to use "I/me/my"; I just stubbornly refused to use them - possibly because my soul wasn't really thinking of this body as being actually "me" yet.
My past lives have not been particularly forthcoming as of yet - so far the only two I have really glimpsed, via guided past life regression, are 805 as a kid during the Siege of Patras (which I hadn't known about beforehand), and 1817 as a French mariner who seemed to have been involved in a mutiny. In both cases I was male and hanged as a relatively young man. I am pretty sure I was also a German soldier during World War I who died in 1918, but I don't really know that life and I don't know what came between it and the present one (with the discarnate period as short as it has been this past century, there'd have to be one longish life or 2-3 short lives in the interim). I may ask your Ogham one Sunday about this; I've had a kind of nostalgia for the fifties and small-town America even though I am way too young to actually remember them and never lived in a small town, but I'm not sure if that's actual past-life stuff or if it's me empathizing with Boomer nostalgia.
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Date: 2023-08-11 07:02 pm (UTC)I've always wondered about that. Yours is the most interesting explanation I've come across for it :)
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Date: 2023-08-11 07:48 pm (UTC)Much later, I read on JMG's blog that bells are one of the ways in which the departed make themselves heard by the living...
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Date: 2023-08-12 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 12:49 am (UTC)