The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell You (21 page)

Did you know that if it weren’t for challenges, life as we knew it wouldn’t be worth living? If in every life you chose to be born to wise, loving parents in technologically pampered times, always with a high intellectual and emotional intelligence quotient, good looking, coordinated, and popular. E-w-w-w-w! Fun for a few times maybe, particularly if previously you’d had a challenging lifetime, but after a while, you’d want more, you’d want it all—not just the bling but the passion. Usually, you’ll see, having more comes from starting with less.

Which doesn’t mean you have to be scared or really uncomfortable in a life to have great gains. It just means you have to be growing. Which is where dreams take you and why you have them. Dreams come with built-in challenges; challenges come with built-in dreams. The parameters that begin each new life are chosen for exactly these reasons. In other words, lives are chosen for the challenges they will likely present, or to flip this, for the dreams you will likely have. Same-same. Kind of explains your dad, huh?

Alejandro, I love you so much. My feelings are indescribable and almost unbearable, except that being here I’m supported by the light that’s everywhere, so even as my heart is full of longing for you, I couldn’t be any happier. I know we’ll be together again, forever, that we are connected, and that you and I and everyone else will know this ecstasy of being that has now overcome me.

It’s beautiful here, so beautiful, but it is there, too, and I’m going to see you soon. Yet until we share the same vibration again, mon chéri, be happy. Whatever it takes, whatever you need, whoever you want—be happy. Which means follow your dreams, face your fears, and every single day move forward. Happiness is my only wish for you, and I am at peace knowing you will have it.

Your handsome savage,

Freddy

W
AIT
O
NE
M
INUTE
, B
UCKO
!

It’s all so glorious! So much peace, harmony, and beauty! So much love! You never had
anything
to fear—not for yourself and not for those you miss. Which is what this “thing” is that the dead want you to know about
living!
But fresh from the jungles, no matter how sublime the afterlife is, you will surely want to ask your welcoming committee about the greatest seeming contradiction of all: “Why
on earth,
literally, do bad things happen to good people?” To which they will reply in the coming chapter.

Understanding is the elixir of life, the soothing balm that helps dry tears and erase wrinkles. No one’s judged for their shortsightedness, but they
are
severely handicapped by it, whereas the enlightened one, far from being your stereotypical hermit, can run faster, jump higher, and has more friends, laughter, and abundance. Hence the joyful urgency the “dead” have for reaching you with insights that reassure and inspire.

The sage doesn’t feel sorrow in parting, whether it precedes days or lifetimes of absence. He knows that to think of someone is to be with him, while the space created will make possible new adventures. He knows that any separation the eyes perceive is a lie. The prophet does not feel anger at betrayal. She saw it coming. She understands that for some, the need for recognition can be greater than their desire to serve. And she knows that her own happiness and greatest mission do not depend on the behavior of others. The mystic does not blame or find fault in others because, seeing himself as a Creator in a world of illusions where nothing happens by chance, he knows that all pain is self-inflicted and that life is fair, even when circumstances are not.

“Hey, sorry, the earth is so huge, you can’t have fair
all of the time,
” said Divine Intelligence, never.

W
HY
D
O
B
AD
T
HINGS
H
APPEN TO
G
OOD
P
EOPLE
?

Wouldn’t it seem, considering the splendor of it all—10 sextillion suns, 100 million exotic species, the splendor of a mere lone
apple
—that the “mind” behind it could have somehow created stopgap measures or instituted mechanisms to prevent unexpected, pointless, bad things from happening? At least from happening to
good people?
Like a dog’s “no barking” collar (hideous things), what if before people think, speak, or behave hurtfully toward others they receive an electric shock? Wouldn’t that work?

Or is ugly the price of beauty? Is violence the price of peace? Is hate the price of love? Does that make sense?

Does it?!

Or maybe, as religions have taught, evil exists unto itself as some primordial earthbound nebula or ugly energy mixture, with a will and intelligence of its own, lurking in paradise like a cockroach in God’s kitchen? Fueled and sustained by … well, no one ever thought to ask. Insufficiently capable of taking over all good things, however depraved, yet invincible enough to stand its ground and hold its own before “
God.
”

Does that make sense?!

Are either of these ideas remotely plausible when you consider …

That there are birds who
sing
for ears that can hear at every hour of the day and night?

That there are creatures of the deep that flip, twirl, and leap just because it’s fun?

That there are “furry friends” who love just as
dearly
as they are loved?

That there are flowers so exquisite, pleasing human eyes could be their only explanation?

Actually,
mustn’t
these splendors surely prove that you’re now living in the most magical fairy tale ever imagined, with no need or place for an errant bogeyman?

“Hey, sorry, the earth is so huge, you can’t have fair
all of the time,
” said Divine Intelligence, never.

C
HECK
Y
OUR
P
REMISES

Could there have been some kind of celestial oversight? Some mistake? Have things spun so out of control that the earth now exists in a range of probabilities that the Divine never foresaw when the first star shone brightly in the night sky?

Or alternatively, hypothetically, just maybe, is the very question of “bad things happening” fatally flawed? Perhaps the presumption that bad things even happen misses the mark. Which would mean that bad things
don’t
happen. That nothing is pointless. That “unexpected” simply means serendipitous, not random.

Well,
wouldn’t this make sense?
Wouldn’t you expect that in
the
Kingdom, the Home of the Divine, given the splendor and order you see everywhere, there would be valuable meaning and a constructive purpose behind all occurrences? Doesn’t this make sense?! If not for the existence of massive contradictory evidence, would you have expected
any
nastiness in “God’s kitchen”?
No f-in’ way!
Right?

This
would make sense! That your glorious bastion of perfection, your floating emerald nestled in the Milky Way galaxy,
ought to be
a turnkey, good-to-go Garden of Eden from day one, forever and ever?
This makes sense!
Where everything hummed, sparkled, and glowed; purred, wagged, and nuzzled; loved, was lovable, and served? Isn’t that what you’d expect from the Divine?
Hallelujah!

With so much now making sense, let’s go to that seemingly contradictory evidence for a closer look.

W
ATER
R
ISES TO
I
TS
O
WN
L
EVEL

Surely by now you’re on board with the notion that thoughts become things. Maybe not convinced of its pervasive absoluteness, but you’re getting there.

You also don’t have to be a tie-dye-wearing hippie to get what’s meant by someone’s “energetic vibration”: that if they think and feel warm and fuzzy, they’ll “vibrate” and thus attract warm and fuzzy—situations, people, whatever. If they think and feel negative and angry, they will “vibrate” negative and angry, and thus similarly attract such. Right? You might also equate one’s “vibe” with his combined thoughts, beliefs, and expectations (usually I just say thoughts) with regard to a particular subject.

I think you see where this is going—positive thoughts create positive manifestations, just as negative thoughts create negative ones—and I think you’re guessing that I’m about to tell you that this, and therefore all of life, is fair. Right-o. Which some may think is an overly sweeping declaration, especially because in the to’ing and fro’ing of the world, it’s easy to miss
how
this works.