In terms of attaining a sense of fulfillment, joy, happiness, enthusiasm, the complete elimination of grief, and the ability to meaningfully interact with my dead wife, Irene, my transition from a place of complete despair when she died to my state now is, frankly, difficult to comprehend. It's kind of unbelievable, to be honest. I never thought I could be remotely happy again without her physical body and her voice in my daily life.
I've explained in prior posts many of the psychological and practical methods I used that I considered mainly responsible. However, I think I may have left out (or given short shrift to) an important - and perhaps crucial - aspect of my journey: the complete metaphysical rearrangement of how I thought about time and the nature of existence.
One of the clear, universal messages we receive from the dead across all categories of investigation is that, in the afterlife, "there is no time." Philosophers and scientists are not even sure what time actually represents here in this world, so it can be very difficult to come to an understanding about what the dead mean by this.
It is self-evidently true that the only aspect of time that we ever experience is the now. When we remember the past, or imagine the future, we are doing that in the now. I've come to think of the past and future as locations that fully exist in "the eternal now" but, like a tree you can only vaguely see in the distance, and cannot touch or smell, or enjoy its shade or climb, are simply beyond the range of your current full sensory reach.
Because I now think of our existence in terms of fundamental consciousness/mind, I have fully accepted that these "future" and "past" locations are fully real, existent places in my now. Even if they do not have the full sensory resolution of my current position/location that my regular senses can easily access in detail, I know that they are just as real as "here." I also know that my wife, from her location, can more easily access these locations and experience them far more fully than I can. In fact, she has assured me several times that, when I visit with her in any "past," "present" or "future" location, she experiences it as 100% real.
Further, any situation or scenario I can "imagine" just represents another location that actually exists in the infinite scope of "everything that is" in the "universal now." She can join me in any location, at any time, from her "now."
What this means is that I fully believe - even know - that when I have these experiences with her, I am actually having them, she is actually there, and they are real. Just as imagining eating a juicy, succulent food can make your mouth water, or taking a placebo can reduce your symptoms (and can actually have healing effects on your body,) these experiences, coupled with my "metaphysical" view of what is going on, produces a profound physiological and psychological effect.
That effect is that I fully and completely feel like our relationship continues; that she is currently real in my life, and that we are doing things together in our now. Otherwise, I could not possibly feel the way I do. While I do not have my full "normal physical senses" during these visits, there are other sensory exchanges that are absolutely thrilling, some of them so overwhelmingly good that my physical body here cannot take but a few seconds of it before I have to leap up from my couch or bed and madly dance around the house in delight, laughing like a maniac in sheer loving joy.
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