Visualizing the afterlife

DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 1603). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

(Q)  I know that a misunderstanding could occur if everyone believed all death experiences would be the same.  I also know that everything, including 3D life, is subjective.  With that in mind, Rita, would you please tell us your 'subjective' experiences?  The 'specifics" that Bob and I would like to know pertain to how you, Rita, are perceiving your 'existence' now.  Most, if not all, of the readers knew you as Rita here in 3D.  Most of us have read that in the afterlife beings take on a body, continue learning, help others make the adjustment, act as guides, as well as other 'activities'.  So, bearing in mind the question does come from a 3D mindset, would you tell us what 'life' is like for you now, maybe as you might write a letter describing your new environment and activities to someone after you've moved?

(A)  I know what they would like me to provide.  It is what I wanted, too, when I was in their situation.  It is what you would like as well.  But how many contradictory stories would you like?  How many will be enough to satisfy that need?  Will one more definite story delivered with or without nuance and caveats help anybody understand anything?  No, it won't.  It would only force or encourage people to choose among visions.

No such story will accomplish what is needed, which - I say it again although it seems to me I have said it continually - is to replace the unconscious and conscious assumptions with new ones.

What good is it to describe an afterlife or a version of the afterlife or a specific of "the afterlife" - when the entire preliminary point is that there is no separate afterlife?

What use is it to describe "the other side" when we are trying to accustom you to the idea that there is no division in the way you have been thinking about it?

I don't object to the question - anything that is on your mind will help clarify the situation - but I will keep coming back to the point that you don't move into new territory by remaining in old territory.  Not that exploration requires abandoning everything you think you know but that it requires entertaining an entirely different structure.

Suppose I were to say, I was met by Abraham at the River Jordan?  Or I entered the Re-education Centre in Focus 27?  Or I found myself in Summerland?  Or I merged with All-That-Is and live in cosmic bliss?  Or I found myself in an analog to physical existence and had to remind myself, from time to time, that I was not "alive" anymore?

I am not mocking the question.  I am trying to shake you from the habit of thinking you can hear something new by putting it into accustomed terms.  I can draw analogies, and they may be helpful and anyway are needed to bridge the gap between preconception and unsuspected reality - but by definition an analogy is not a photograph.  Something that is more or less "like" something else is clearly not like it in other respects, or it would be not an analogy but an identity.

Now please move from where you started.  To get any benefit from this or any communication, you have to do more than be open to hearing; you need to prepare the ground.  And that means be actively aware, while you read what I or others have to say, that at least some of what you have constructed as a mental framework is wrong.  At least some things you may have discarded or may never have considered are right, or more right than you have considered.  Thus in Christian theology you will find many glimpses of another way to see things, just as Frank always insisted and I resisted.  This is not to say the Christian theologies (for there are more than one) are right, or that I see things in those terms.  It is to say, merely, that here as elsewhere you may find valid hints.

As for instance, angels.  Have you thought of angels as "beings" who have not had and will not have the 3D experience?  Have you thought of the relationship between such beings and the other beings - the larger selves of 3D beings - who have had it?  That is the kind of thinking you will need to do, if you wish to follow me to the new ground I hope to bring you to.

Rita's experience

DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 1637). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

I have not forgotten the question, and I don't intend to dance around it.  I am trying hard to assure that you put yourselves into a place where you can actually hear something new and not cram it into accustomed ideas.

Remember.

No "other side", but only additional dimensions not clearly perceived from 3D, and hence crammed into attributes of time.

No afterlife separate from physical life, but one continual life that always partakes of all dimensions.

No separate self that dies and goes on to a nonphysical experience, but a seemingly separate part of a larger being that moves from relative isolation to recovery of its awareness of unbroken connection.

No external objective environment outside of 3D, no subjective shell, but one undivided reality.  (This does not mean no relative separation into units - what am I if not that?  It means you realize that you are a part of everything in a way that will require some extended discussion, another time.  Make note of this as another question, perhaps.)

I have to say, I am afraid that as soon as I move to the next part of this, you will immediately forget what I have just said, and will busily pack everything new into your accustomed containers, thus preserving your comfort at the expense of your potential growth in understanding.  I know, from personal experience!  There is nothing harder than realizing, all the way down, that you are hearing something new.  That's why so much reportage from "the afterlife" is so contradictory.  I used to wonder if "the guys upstairs" ever got frustrated in their attempt to communicate.  I think now, the answer is yes and no.  Yes, because so little gets through the mental filters.  No, because it is a worthwhile effort, and every communication that does get done is worthwhile and satisfying.

Now, you will think I am only now getting to answering your question.  If so, that will serve as a sign to yourself that you haven't really heard anything I've said so far, but have been impatiently (or perhaps patiently) waiting for me to "get to the point".  Well, I have put out the signs; it is up to each of you, whether you follow them.

I spent my last days in a coma.  That meant my body was abandoned in terms of my conscious supervision.  I could maintain a form of focused consciousness that is possible only in the body, yet not have to focus it on keeping the body safe and functioning.  Thus, I could experience "the afterlife" in a way impossible after dropping the body.

I see that I must explain that.  Bearing in mind that we extend to all dimensions (because there is no other way it can be) and that the conditions of 3D life result in our consciousness being intense, focused, and narrow in extent, you can see that it is a greatly different viewpoint of the higher dimensions than is afforded when our consciousness is centered in the higher dimensions without the focusing effect.  In a sense, the coma was the best of both worlds when it came to exploration.  But this was only because I was ready for it.  An unprepared mind would not be able to comprehend, though it might observe.  Another way to say it is that our backgrounds and biases form the limits to what we can comprehend, which is why reports and scriptures differ.

As I lay in a coma, as I went exploring possibilities, I saw things still in my accustomed manner - and why should we expect anything else?  We do not suddenly (nor gradually) become someone else just because we distance ourselves from, and eventually drop, the body.  So, I saw research projects, you might say.  I saw continuities rather than new departures.  The differences I saw I attributed to new conditions, the similarities I attributed to my remaining me.

Then, I finally was finished with that tethered form of existence.  I released the body and hence released my connection to the factor that centered my attention in one 3D focus.  That does not mean I left 3D.  How could I?  If we are always in all dimensions, how can we leave any of them?  Instead, it means my consciousness was released from 3D conditions.  I was no longer constrained, and, in effect, the barriers between my consciousness and the conscious presence of my larger being were removed.  (This is analogy, remember.  Not barriers of any kind, really, more an accustomed focus.)

Now what situation did I step into?  (And here you hope for a description of day-to-day reality, forgetting or disregarding everything I said at length earlier.  Try to get beyond that.)

I saw that I was part of a being - one being among uncounted others, by the way.  The larger being is not a code-word for God, nor for The Human Race.  That being, that in a way could be looked upon as my creator, or perhaps like my parents, or like the soil from which I as a newly formed separate intelligence had sprung - that being always exists regardless of sojourns of any part of it into 3D.  The 3D experience - each 3D experience, I should say - only adds to the total.  It is valued, but it is not the central focus of the being.

So my consciousness remained, and it also transformed, or I should say acquired an alternate way to experience itself.  And, parenthetically, I think that may be the simplest explanation of what people call the past-life review: It is their sudden seeing of their life from the point of view of the larger being.  Because they return to 3D, they naturally report the experience in 3D terms, which is not wrong but is radically incomplete, as if you were to describe a person as seen only from the right-hand side and not from front, back, and left, not to say and from above and below, inside and outside.

I suddenly realized (that's how it would appear from the 3D point of view) that "Rita" and Rita's whole life were (a) only a small part of my being's life, ...

When my consciousness was released from its 3D-centered existence, I saw all the unsuspected background of my life - all the non-3D activity that was going on while I graded papers, so to speak - and I realized that neither my 3D life nor the non-3D life centered on 3D.  It seemed to, while I was there, or was focused there, I should say, but in fact it did not.  3D life is in support of the larger life, not vice-versa.  But I'm afraid we will have to pause here, because it can't be expressed as an addendum.