If I Ever Pass This Way Again

In a spiritual puzzler submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, a reader named Tom asks:

I just stumbled upon your website in my spiritual search and I am glad I did. Over the last 3 years I have lost both my parents and these events have made me consciously aware of my own decease. I used to feel more comfortable with what awaits the states on the other side only I am at present more scared than ever in that location may be zilch. I guess I am looking for some comfort that my parents are ok and I will see them again one 24-hour interval. Thanks.

First, my thoughts are with you lot, Tom, on the loss of your parents.

Ascension from Death

Both of my parents also died inside the by few years. I wrote about their passing in an article, "When Death is a Commemoration."

It is very common for usa to contemplate the meaning of life and death when our parents' time of decease arrives. Whatever our human relationship may have been with them, knowing that they are gone changes our view of ourselves. At that place is no longer an older generation above us. Now, in a psychological sense, nosotros're on our own. Now we have to think about why we're here on earth, and about where nosotros are headed in life and in our own eventual death.

So your spiritual conundrum raises at least two issues that confront us at the time of our parents' deaths:

1. Are my parents okay, and will I see them again one day?
2. What does my parents' death mean for my own life?

Allow's look at these questions in contrary guild.

The irresolute of the guard

First, this article is nearly when our parents die having lived out a reasonable lifespan, and then that we, their children, are well into adulthood ourselves. I sense from the way yous phrase things that this is your situation.

As long every bit our parents are alive, even if we ourselves are well forth in years, at that place is a sense that the older generation is still present and available for us to turn to. In an odd way, this is true even if they tin can no longer have care of themselves, and no longer have their full mental capacities. We may even be taking intendance of them. But assuming they were reasonably proficient parents, even then nosotros accept a feeling that those who took care of the states, and who we turned to in problem, are still here with us—fifty-fifty if they may exist hidden away in a deteriorating physical trunk and brain that prevents them from beingness fully themselves.

When our parents die, the reality settles in that they are no longer here. Whether they were healthy and with it right up to the end or spent years non existence truly themselves before they died, there is a certain finality about expiry. The people who raised united states and to whom nosotros turned more times than nosotros can count are gone.

This causes us to re-evaluate our ain life and to realize, sometimes with a shock, that we ourselves are now truly the ones in accuse. At that place is no parental safety net to fall back on. Whatever we brand of our life, that's what it is.

And of course, though nosotros may have faced the death of friends and acquaintances, the death of our parents often hits much closer to home. It causes us to recollect about "ultimate things" in a way we may non have idea of them earlier.

In brusque, whatever the circumstances of our parents' death, that event causes a paradigm shift in our consciousness, our sense of life, and our sense of ourselves and our place in this world.

The lessons of death

I sense that much of what you are feeling now is not but virtually your parents, but most your own life, and its meaning and ultimate fate.

Even though it tin can be uncomfortable to reconsider and question things that seemed so sure to us before, this is both a natural and a spiritual role of life.

Ultimately, it is not good for us to have things but because that's what our parents instilled into us. Yes, good parents can be a swell influence for skilful in our own life. But every bit long as we are living on their borrowed strength and values, our life is non truly our own.

In a sense, the death of our parents is a wake-upwards call for us. It is a bulletin from God, if y'all volition, that nosotros must now live our ain life, make our ain choices, and be fully responsible for ourselves in a style that may never take seemed quite so real when our parents were still alive.

In particular, annihilation we have accustomed automatically and without question, just because that's what we were taught, is non a full and strong function of our own self and character. Beliefs and ideas that we accept simply and uncritically accepted from others are borrowed values. Perhaps in our parents' character they were tried and tested in the crucible of real life experiences. But even if nosotros ultimately accept many of our parents' values, we must brand them our own past trial and testing in our own life and experience.

In other words, no thing how fine and adept the educational activity and case of parents, teachers, ministers, mentors, and and then on may be, those things are not ours until we have questioned them, tested them, tried them out, and hammered them into the shape of our ain unique mind, life, and experience and then that they are truly our own.

And of course, many of us too have the feel of trying and testing things our parents taught us or instilled in usa, and finding that they no longer fit. Many of us have the experience of replacing what we were taught equally a kid and every bit a youth with different beliefs and values that make more sense to us, and work meliorate in our own life and feel.

All of this questioning, testing, and working things out in our own mind is a healthy and necessary role of becoming the unique individual that nosotros ourselves are.

So equally uncomfortable as is your radical questioning of issues of life and expiry that used to seem so comfortable and solid to you, this is a necessary passage as you lot determine for yourself what your own beliefs, loves, attitudes, and deportment will be in this life.

One mode to wait at it is that in dying, your parents take given you lot the gift of exploring life for yourself, on your ain terms, and deciding for yourself what you want to believe and who you want to be every bit a person.

Though this tin can be a scary and discomforting time, information technology can as well be an exciting and adventurous time of renewal, discovery, and reshaping your life!

Where are they now?

If what I've written and so far makes some sense to you, and then possibly y'all will sympathize why I believe information technology is really role of God's programme that in the ordinary course of life, there comes a time when our parents are no longer with us. For many of us, this means nosotros have to feel that our parents are gone.

But of course, the questions still linger:

• Are they really gone?
• Where are they now?
• How are they doing?
• Will I always see them again?

Though there are many more than questions we ask ourselves when our parents die, let's await at these for now, and see if we tin can find some answers and some comfort.

Of course, we could fence these things, and argue over whether my responses to your questions are actually true. If you're in a doubting style, delight read the article, "Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?"

Beyond that, I would simply say, listen to your mind, and to your heart. There is more to life than logic and proof. There is the experience of the sages and deep thinkers of all the ages. And in that location is a response within our own heart when we encounter something that has the ring of deeper truth.

So, sidestepping all the questioning, debate, and skepticism, for now I will simply give you my responses to these questions.

Are my parents really gone?

Your parents are gone . . . and they aren't.

They are gone from this physical, material plane of life, and from this world—and they will never render. At that place will be no physical resurrection at some time to come Apocalypse. (Run across "Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?") Your parents' bodies, whether cached or cremated, volition "go the fashion of all the globe" (Joshua 23:14; 1 Kings 2:2) The materials of which they were composed volition "render to the dust" (Genesis 3:19; Job 34:15; Psalm 104:29) of the physical ecosystem from which they came.

And all the same, your parents themselves are not really gone. Yes, you lot knew your parents through their physical bodies, their actions, their words. But your parents were not their bodies. It was their minds and their hearts that made them who they are. And those things are non physical.

The spirit of your parents is all the same very much alive. Their truthful cocky is even so very much live. That's because everything that made them who they are is not physical, but spiritual. Information technology is their loves and behavior, their character and their personality, their sense of humor and their sadness, their wisdom and their silliness—and everything else that made them the unique people they are.

These things tin never die.

What we hither on world phone call "death" is merely the removal of the real person, which is the spirit, from the physical body that had housed it here on earth. From a spiritual perspective, physical death is the birth of a soul from the womb of the material globe into the fullness of life in the spiritual globe (run across "When Death is a Commemoration"). And though nosotros cannot see spirits with our physical optics, they are every bit as real and solid to themselves and to 1 some other in the spiritual earth as our concrete bodies are to usa here in the physical world.

Your parents are still very much alive. And if yous were close to them, and they cared for y'all, they are nevertheless present with yous even if you lot are not consciously aware of it. In the spiritual globe, thinking virtually people brings their presence. If your parents are thinking of you, so they are still subtly nowadays with y'all in spirit.

Where are my parents now?

Hither's the funny thing. Since your parents died within the past few years, they might be living a life very like to the one they had lived before they died. If yous similar, you can moving-picture show them living in a business firm similar to the one they had last lived in before they died, and going on nearly their daily lives with one some other and in their community.

Of course, they volition no longer be with the people they left behind who are notwithstanding alive here on earth. Merely they will be meeting and greeting old friends and family members who passed on before them. They will be reigniting old friendships, and finding joy in reuniting with the people whose passing they had mourned while they were however alive on this earth.

To respond this question more technically, it is nigh likely that your parents are now living in what Emanuel Swedenborg called "the world of spirits." This is a vast region of the spiritual world situated between heaven and hell. Information technology is where everyone who dies first goes immediately after death. Some stay there only a brusk time. Others stay for every bit long as the equivalent of a few decades here on earth. Anybody stays there as long as necessary to get their lives sorted out and to gain clarity about who they truly are in their real, inner self.

For more on the earth of spirits and what happens to usa afterwards we die, delight run into the commodity, "What Happens To Us When We Dice?"

How are my parents doing?

During the course of their time in the world of spirits, your parents volition gradually grow younger in body, until their spiritual trunk—which is just as real and solid at that place as our physical body is here—regains its youthful force and vigor. Practise you have pictures of your parents when they were immature? If so, that will give you some idea of what they are starting to look like now.

It doesn't happen all at once. But earlier long, they will leave behind all of the frailties of age, and feel young and strong again! That'south considering in our minds, even when nosotros are onetime we are still young. Toward the stop of his life, my own father forgot everything that just happened more than about ten minutes ago. But he would regale us with stories of how he met his bride (my mother) over sixty years ago. He would tell us over and over again how she would put on her jeans and jump behind him on his motorcycle so that they could go for a ride together. "That'south my gal!" he would say!

At present, I don't know if my father volition go himself a pair of wheels in the spiritual globe. But I wouldn't put it past him! If y'all can film your own parents in their younger years, enjoying the pursuits and pastimes that they did in those days, then perhaps you can proceeds some idea of how they are doing, and what they are doing.

Of course, there'due south more to the spiritual world than fun and games. Your parents will at present be opening up their hearts and minds in a mode that they may never have been able to do fully while they were yet alive in the textile earth. Social strictures and obligations ofttimes suppress our total personality, expression, and joy of life here on earth. In the spiritual world, those external strictures are taken away more and more, until we tin can fully express who we truly are, heart, listen, and soul.

Did you have a glimpse of who your parents were in their heart of hearts? If and then, then yous can get some deeper sense of how they are doing, and what they are devoting their lives to at present that they no longer take to worry virtually social community or money or decease or taxes.

In brusque, assuming your parents were good people, they are doing better than fine. Every day they spend in the spiritual world, they are able to express themselves more and more fully, and live more and more of the kind of life they truly beloved.

Will I ever see my parents again?

If you lot're with me and so far, then the answer to this ane is easy:

Yes!

When it comes our time to die, and nosotros get out behind this concrete earth and enter the spiritual world, we volition be able to see and get together with all of the friends, family unit, acquaintances, and coworkers who have died earlier us.

How?

Only by thinking about them.

As I said earlier, in the spiritual world, when we recollect about someone it causes them to be present with us. Of form, it's actually a little more complicated than that—merely at that place's no need to go into the complications now. In the spiritual world, when we remember about someone and desire to run into them, it brings us closer to them. The very act of thinking about them carries u.s. into the same spiritual "infinite" that they are in, so that we can see them and talk to them.

And of course, the ones nosotros volition think about the most, and most want to see, will be the ones we take been closest to in this life. In the spiritual world, there is great freedom to travel here and in that location, and to gather with anyone we desire to see. (Information technology is also possible to go away from those we don't want to see.)

When our time to die comes, it is very natural for united states to think about the people we loved who have died earlier us. And because nosotros are thinking nearly them, it is very likely that they volition be the outset ones to greet us when we wake upwardly in the spiritual globe.

From the brief words in your spiritual conundrum, y'all seem to retrieve of your parents with love and affection. And I suspect those feelings are common. So I fully look that yous will see them soon afterwards you dice. You volition then be able to spend as much fourth dimension with them as yous want.

Where does all of this come up from?

You may ask, "How can y'all speak almost these things with such assurance? Where did all this stuff come from?"

These are not my own ideas. I did non pull them out of thin air. Yes, I've spent many years contemplating the afterlife, and coming to some of my own conclusions.

I've as well read many accounts of near-death experiences, and found them confirmatory of what I had already believed nearly the spiritual earth. I even wrote a book nigh near-death experiences almost 20 years ago, called Death and Rebirth.

However, if you lot want the real story of the afterlife from someone who spent many years exploring that realm while still living here on earth, the book for you is Heaven and Hell, past Emanuel Swedenborg.

Are you a bit skeptical?

That'due south only natural.

For a lilliputian more groundwork on Swedenborg before you accept the plunge, run across: "Who was Swedenborg? What Should I Read?" This post and video too offer links where you can purchase Heaven and Hell as a impress or Kindle book, or download free PDF and E-Book (epub) versions.

Beyond that, all I can say is: Read the book! Then decide for yourself whether the spiritual realm that Swedenborg described in vivid detail over 250 years ago makes sense to your mind . . . and to your heart.

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted by a reader.

For further reading:

• What Happens To Us When We Die?
• Who Are the Angels and How Do They Alive?
• Where are my Children who accept Died? Will I Always See Them Again?
• Sky and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on World

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Source: https://leewoof.org/2014/02/14/what-does-it-mean-when-my-parents-die-will-i-see-them-again/

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