Angelic Pathways (16 page)

“No,
you
need to go with Mom.”

The emergency room of the city hospital was packed with patients and security alike; getting in to see my father was harder than getting on an airplane as we passed through security checks along the way. When the nurse escorted Mom and me to a family room, my heart froze and I watched my mother slowly crumble as we waited for someone to come talk to us.

The doctors entered the room. The visit was too brief for my liking, but what more could they say? My father had suffered a blood clot to the heart, or so they thought.
He was eighty-five, why bother with details?
I imagined them thinking as they departed. After a long cry with Mom and our last visit to my dad in the ER, there was only one detail that really stuck with me the rest of the day: the doctors pronounced my father’s passing at exactly eight thirty.

Unlike in my dream, however, it wasn’t spring. We were in the middle of a brutal, wintry November. The chill seemed degrees colder than normal, and the winds were perpetually antagonistic. Dad died right in the middle of it all, Heaven bless him, and there was no other time that I listened to him more than right then. Once on the day he died and then twice or so at the funeral, I heard his voice.

“Don’t bother coming to the grave, Chantel. I’m not there. You hear me? I won’t be there.”

The inclination to disagree with him never came. For a while I thought my aversion to cold weather had made my cooperation easier, but even as spring arrived, I never went. During the passing seasons, my thoughts were more on the dream of my father than the death of him. Suddenly the dream became more than a flash of memories past. It was my father’s final goodbye and I will forever cherish the moment.

Yet, as I sit here sixteen years later thinking back on that dream, I can’t help but go back to that moment when my father was so angry and belligerent at the man in the white car. Though I was afraid to admit it to myself for years, I always thought the man looked very much like Jesus. And the thought made me cringe and whisper to the heavens, “Dad, what were you thinking?”

But my father’s mind had been ravaged by Alzheimer’s. I’d like to think that during his twilight hour, he was just as confused as he was frightened. To this day, I’m unsure how his moment of transition truly went, being that I haven’t had any real, substantial contact with him since. The same went for my mother, too, until one day when I went looking for her on the other side.

That Sunday in the spring of 2004 was a quiet one at the tea shop. I sat reading a book as friends of the store stopped by to pay respects to my ailing Reiki Master, Ella, and her closest friend, Britt. After a long and emotionally heavy day, Britt sat down next to me with a sigh, and I felt the need to relay my experiences with Mom and Jake in hopes that it would help her to better handle Ella’s passing when it came.

Knowing my mother was always close, whether real or imagined, helped me through the mourning process. We would talk in my dreams as if she had never left, and amazingly, we were able to tie up quite a few loose ends between the two of us. Still, exactly three years later, there was an emptiness inside of me, a part of me that yearned for her to be physically near.

“I know Ella is going to watch over you and the store,” I said to Britt with teary eyes, “just like my mom watches over … me.” And that’s when I felt an emptiness much more profound than I had ever felt before. Mom was gone. I closed my eyes to call to her only to hear and see nothing. I tried to reach out to her with my soul, and still nothing. Britt, seeing that I was instantly overwhelmed with grief, placed her hand on my shoulder.

“She’s gone,” I choked. Just as a mother eases away from her child who has slipped quietly into slumber, so did my mom’s presence leave me, silent and unnoticed.

“Oh, Chantel. She’s there,” Britt said, trying to console me.

“No, she’s gone. She’s not there!” My eyes were still closed as I searched the darkness of my intuitive vision for her. “She’s … back here. It’s almost as if …” I regrouped slowly.

“As if what?” Britt prodded.

“Nothing. I think she’s been reborn.” I chuckled through tears, hiding the pain in my heart. I knew at that moment what had happened. My mother felt it safe to leave my side because Ella was returning to the Realm of Spirit to watch over the next phase of my life. The notion was only proven to be true when Ella passed away just days later.

It wouldn’t be until I had gone on a tour of the Realm of Spirit with Archangel Gabriel that I would encounter my mother again. It was when the angel and I passed through the Akashic Records that I saw a spirit with an uncanny resemblance to my mother. Instantly drawn in its direction, I pulled away from Gabriel to get a closer look. When I did, my heart leapt for joy.

I stared at my mother’s smiling face as we hovered there among glowing walls of the cybrary while streaming code sped past us. I couldn’t believe that she was here after having felt what I did those few days before Ella passed away. I quickly learned that when it comes to discovering truths about the other side, you must be willing to let go of all preconceived notions as well as any bits of knowledge you think may be accurate.

“Mom, I thought you were reborn.”

“I was.”

“And um, now you’re here? Did I miss something?”

“You missed a lot,” she grinned and then took on her glowing form in the shape of an orb. “The part you recognize as your mother is but one particle of what I am, Chantel.” She illustrated this as one of her tendrils drifted past me, leaving a trail of glowing dust.

“I am everywhere and yet nowhere.” She was speaking softly to my mind now. “I was reborn in China and in America and in places you probably haven’t seen yet or know of. And yet I am here with you.”

“One particle?” My eyes were fixed on a single speck of dust still drifting before me.

“One particle, Chantel. I am the Source of what you know as your mother, and yet even my entire form is but one particle of the ultimate Source of Creation, from where we all come and to where we must return.”

So, where is this Source and how do we find it?

Return to the Origin of All Things

Upon waking up from the dream, as many on the other side call it (some even call it a game), you are kept in close company with the angels—your parent angel and those that may have served as your mentoring angels during your lifetime. As you acclimate to being home again, you undergo a two-part review.

The first review is given by the Council, a group of twelve heavenly bodies of light that grade you not on what you did during your lifetime, but on how much you learned. It’s here that each moment of your life is held under a microscope to see how well you performed the tasks you initially set out to do. There is no pass or fail with this review. It’s merely another phase of the learning process for the human soul.

During this review, your parent angel remains by your side. He’s a mediator, of sorts, that explains to you anything you may not understand and helps keep you grounded. After all, you just got back from the equivalent of a journey to the moon and here twelve reporters are asking you all kinds of questions as you review footage of your life. You haven’t even gotten used to the gravity shifts yet, much less to the fact that you just died and are waiting to be sent to Heaven … or to Hell.

Archangel Uriel revealed to me that it never fails—nearly everyone standing before the Council is shaking in their boots, wondering if they’re going to get assigned a pair of wings and a cushy white cloud, or assigned to shoveling coals in the infernal realms.

According to the archangels, you don’t get either.

Because our lives are already scripted, we’ve done away with the notion of free will in the human world. God already knows what’s going to happen and how you’ll react to it before you’re even born, so to sit you down and judge you for a long list of sins that even
you
knew you would commit before you left Heaven is pointless. The only sin here is not learning the life lessons through the challenges written for you, and the penalty for that is having to do those challenges, or something similar to them, all over again. That’s not to say that you have to relive the life you just left, but you will have to write into your next life script the challenges that will help your soul learn and evolve to the next level.

Then there are those who don’t have much to review because they weren’t in the human realm very long to begin with. These are souls that enter the realm only to leave while still very young. Such humans are highly evolved and are close to becoming, if they are not already, spirit guides. They fully understand that their purpose is to help teach others by making an early departure. Because of the immense pain often felt by those left behind, the souls return as spirit guides to offer comfort, encouragement, and guidance.

After the first review is completed, you are then accompanied by your parent angel to a place where you feel comfortable. It is there where you two have a heart-to-heart talk. This second review is highly informal, and depending on the angel, you could get anything from, “I knew you could do it!” to “I warned you! Didn’t I warn you? I so totally warned you.” But it’s all lighthearted and good-natured. The point is to ease you into remembering who you truly are—not a human with flaws, allergies, poor social skills, and a bum knee, but a beautiful, radiant child of God who just enjoys playing masquerade … a lot.

Depending on the life you chose, during this time with your angel, you may meet up with loved ones. But those who have chosen darker paths for the purpose of fulfilling God’s Great Equation will need time,
a lot more
time, to acclimate.

The Notion of Hell

It seems to bring some people comfort to believe that those who hurt them, or those who have committed heinous crimes against humanity, have a special place reserved in Hell where the offenders will be eternally tormented for their sins. But the truth of the matter is, the ex-husband who refuses to pay child support, the cyber thief who cleaned out your bank account, and even the serial killer prowling along the interstate all have a part in the divine plan.

Nothing—absolutely nothing—can happen in this reality without the Source’s approval.

When I’ve discussed this with clients, I’ve had some scoff and call me crazy. Some have pushed away from the table in disgust with, “I don’t want to go to Heaven, then, if so-and-so is there.” I’ve even had clients get up and walk out on me.

No, I don’t want to think that I’m going to wind up in the same place as those who couldn’t do right by me in this lifetime. And I definitely don’t want to go somewhere where murderers and rapists get an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card. The thought turns my stomach, yet I’ve seen those people beside the very same people we might consider saints on the other side. But I wouldn’t have known this unless I had been told. In the Realm of Spirit, we drop the human form for the most part and instead take on our true forms of pulsing orbs of light—all connected by a silver thread, or umbilical cord, through which we communicate and interact.

But the souls who carry out such nefarious deeds don’t come back to the Realm of Spirit with a clear conscience. Remember what I said earlier about how we all take back with us the emotions and memories of the life we just experienced. For the majority of us, it’ll be difficult enough to forgive our sixth-grade teacher for humiliating us in class or our boss for cheating us out of four hours’ pay. But for those who have gone through much darker lives, there is a quarantine period, a cleansing period of sorts where they are not allowed to rejoin the populace upon return.

I should also note here that this quarantine is not enforced to protect the good and kind people of the afterlife, but to protect those who were the embodiment of some of humanity’s worst nightmares.

When a soul awakens from the dream and brings back the horrors they committed in a lifetime, it is much more difficult for them to accept the spirit world than it is for others. The guilt is so intense and oppressive that a soul can’t shake it off immediately and is thus sent to a place under the watchful eye of archangels who are delegated the task of helping those souls to remember who they truly are.

Some souls bounce back fairly quickly.

Many do not.

So this notion of Hell that weaves in and out of history and cultures is not a place where souls go after having been judged. It’s where they go when they can’t stop judging themselves.