165 What Happens After You Die? Q & A

This podcast offers encouragement when so many of us have and are experiencing the heart break of losing those close to us.  One listener has shared how difficult it was for her when her mother passed. Recently her heart broke when her 24 year old step daughter also passed. She reached out with a beautiful request, "Please speak more about what happens after we die, based on what you gathered in your spiritual and psychotherapy practices."   

This recording of a live Q & A has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness.

These podcasts are meant to supplement your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. They are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. I feel these podcasts are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last.  Though they, also, all stand on their own.  Since we are each a bit different, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy.  If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support.  You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

Welcome,

Everybody.

How are you doing?

Welcome to Awakening Together,

Relaxing into Happiness.

I'm William Cooper.

Good to see you.

Hey,

Patricia.

Hey,

Jennifer.

Hey,

Everybody.

Hey,

Therese.

So Therese writes,

Hi,

William.

I finally had an opportunity to listen to Podcast 164 in full.

Although I was on the live session,

I love to re-listen.

I can usually absorb more.

I especially paid intent attention when you talked about your thoughts on death and consciousness after this lifetime.

It brought me much needed comfort and deep peace.

It's what I believe as well.

I keep imagining my sweet stepdaughter moving forward in her journey wherever her soul is now.

Tomorrow would have been her 25th birthday.

Blessings on you and your stepdaughter,

Therese.

Condolences.

We're so sorry about her passing.

And our hearts go out to you and her and your family.

I know all of us have been touched by death,

And I know my family is right now.

I don't even know what to say.

We have somebody in our family that's very sick.

So Jennifer goes back and forth and is helping with chemotherapy.

So I know all of you are touched.

And this is why I appreciate your question and comments so much,

Therese.

I'm going to continue with them.

The day I brought her ashes home,

Interesting things began to happen.

I set them up in her old room,

Which has been my meditation room for a few years now.

I bumped into my altar,

And one of my crystals fell off.

I picked it up,

And it was the one that says,

Gratitude.

The next day,

I was placing a crystal grid by the urn.

I placed a green heart in front of it,

And it spun around to face me.

A few weeks later,

While in her room,

I started asking her if she could hear me.

I joked and said,

Please let me know,

Because I feel silly if I'm talking to an empty room.

I said,

Let's use a symbol.

How about an angel?

I love them.

I then went into my bedroom,

And there was a text from my other stepdaughter,

Telling me she had made us reservations for dinner at Seraphina's.

Seraphim are the highest,

Purest form of angels,

And Seraphina is the female form of that.

Of course,

The ego brain wanted to write it off,

So the next morning,

I was flying to Miami,

And I said,

Anna,

Send me another angel,

Just so I'm sure.

I kid you not.

It's hard to read this.

I kid you not.

My Uber's driver's name,

Angel.

So,

Of course,

The next day,

I'm like,

Let's go for three out of three.

Sure enough,

I'm doing the New York Time mini crossword,

And one of the answers,

Angel.

The night before,

She came to me in a dream.

All of the family was there.

We knew she had passed,

So I kept asking her,

Can you see us?

Can you see us?

She repeatedly kept saying while laughing,

I'm right here.

I'm right here.

Then she hugged me so tight.

We're going to address these specifically a little later on,

Therese.

Therese continues,

Please speak more about what happens after we die.

Based on what you gathered in your psychotherapy and hypnosis and spiritual practices.

I have my own beautiful beliefs about consciousness and what happens afterwards,

But can't get enough of hearing about others' experiences and beliefs.

Shared experience helps me validate that it's real and not my imagination and is such a source of comfort.

Hopefully for others as well.

Yes,

It is.

If you can touch on it,

I'd be so grateful.

We will,

And it's such a deep question and covers so many levels of reality that this is going to be quite a thorough answer.

Maybe more thorough than you expect,

But I hope some part of it is helpful to all of you.

And I'm fully aware that all of you or many of you have such depth of experience with this question and these observations that you yourself could say so much about them.

Therese continues,

I must say,

I do believe that the baby steps I have taken every day since May 2024,

When I lost my mom,

Probably have helped open me to be able to not be blocked and get her messages.

We'll talk about that.

So for that,

I am grateful to you for your instructions and guidance.

I look forward to the next podcast.

Thank you,

Therese.

That's such a heartfelt question and observation and I edited it for this podcast.

I hope I did it justice.

Therese says yes.

I'm going to give you my perspective and I'm going to talk about clients I've had and different experiences other people have shared with me as well as my own.

And then I'm also going to talk about somebody who passed and then they,

On the other side,

Communicated back what it was like.

And it has a lot to do with what you wrote,

Therese.

Also,

I had a friend who died four or five times and he came back each time.

So he explained what that experience was like.

I'll talk about that.

So we're going to cover it in a lot of different ways.

Where I'd like to start,

Though,

Is with awakening because these podcasts are about awakening and all 164 that you referred to,

Therese,

Are step-by-step processes on how to be clear,

How to awake.

Awake to what?

Awake to yourself,

To be yourself.

What is awakening?

It's you without your problems.

It's you without your blockages.

It's you being clear.

That's what awakening is.

Often we're very separated from ourselves and the degree of separation is indicated by the amount of suffering and pain that we have inside.

If we're separated a lot,

We feel a lot of pain and suffering.

If we're totally one with ourselves,

We feel love,

Joy,

And peace.

Light and beyond.

Deep emptiness,

Which is a fullness.

It's a very comforting place.

We feel all of these things simultaneously as we're awake.

Well,

If you think about it,

This conversation about what happens after you die,

That's the same kind of thing because we're going from apparent separation.

We're here.

Somebody who dies is over there.

We're separate.

Or maybe they don't exist anymore.

We wonder about that.

That's very separate.

In the same way as awakening is undoing that separation,

Dissolving that separation,

When we see clearly from awakening,

There's also no separation in death,

In so-called death.

What I experience,

As I've gotten clearer and clearer over the last 50 years of my practice,

I first started meditating in 1973.

As I've become clearer and clearer,

I can see more clearly.

And my guru in India always said,

To see is to be free.

Because when you can see clearly,

It dissolves blockages.

You're not hindered by blockages.

So from my vantage point,

There is no separation in death.

In fact,

There is no death.

All we know,

If you really think about it,

Is that a body starts in this reality,

It's born,

And it ends.

That's all we know.

Somehow,

Somebody got the idea that when the body ends,

The being ends.

But that's not true at all.

Only the body ends.

Not the being.

Now,

Somebody could say that,

And I'm not asking you to believe anything that I say.

I'm just telling you what my experience is.

You have your own.

But sometimes it's helpful to hear from others,

So I'm sharing because Therese asked me to.

From my vantage point,

There is not death.

The being goes forever.

I feel it.

It's not something I intellectually.

.

.

Yes,

I intellectually believe it,

But I'm not coming from that place.

I'm coming from the experience.

I can see it.

We are eternal.

You are eternal.

There's no ending of you.

Being does not end.

My experiences I've talked about many times in these podcasts are on the deepest level.

I feel myself beyond this creation,

Infinite,

Deep emptiness,

Which,

As it comes down into creation,

Is light,

And as that slows down,

It slows down into a low-pitch and high-pitch sound,

Which then slows down into peace,

Love,

Well-being,

Which slows down into atoms,

And then into molecules,

And then to all sorts of objects.

Every object in this world is frozen consciousness or slowed-down consciousness.

That's my experience.

So there is no stopping of it,

And that's what you can see.

You see from your center.

That's what you experience.

So I could stop right there and say there is no separation inside,

And there's no separation in death on the outside.

There is no death.

I could say that.

But if I heard that 20 years ago,

30 years ago,

That wouldn't be enough for me.

I'd be like,

Yeah,

That guy's saying it.

That sounds good.

I like it,

But,

You know,

What does that do for me?

So I'm going to go into it a lot deeper from different perspectives.

But I said that first because everything I say from now on isn't so important to me because I don't need it to prove anything.

I already know it.

There's a reason why I'm saying that,

And that is that's true for you too,

Ultimately.

Because the mind is a funny thing.

The mind never knows anything fully.

It will never know anything fully.

It always doubts.

It always questions because every time you use the mind,

You separate yourself from your deepest being to a small degree.

There's a separation,

And in that separation is a doubt and an unknowing.

The only way to truly know is to be centered in who you are.

Then you know everything you need to know.

So starting an awakening,

That's enough.

However,

Let's go on to the next step.

I said that one of the levels that I experience myself on,

And I understand many of you also experience yourself in these ways,

But if you want to go on into science,

The first law of thermodynamics talks about energy,

And that's one of the ways that I experience myself is energy.

You probably do too.

But it says that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It's there because it's consciousness.

It can only be transformed into a different form,

But it can never be created or destroyed.

That's the first law of thermodynamics.

That's just the law of physics.

It's a funny thing.

René Descartes lived in the 1600s,

And he was doing a good thing.

You remember his quote probably,

I think,

Therefore I am.

And he was the father of modern rationalism,

Which has influenced us greatly in our culture.

I think,

Therefore I am.

But he made an error in that statement.

You don't need the word think.

That's an action.

All you need is I am,

Therefore I am.

You don't need think.

It would be like,

I scratch my ear,

Therefore I am.

Or I walk,

Therefore I am.

Or I hop up and down,

Therefore I am.

Or I think,

Therefore I am.

All of those are actions.

It's unnecessary to say,

I think,

Therefore I am.

However,

Because he did say it,

People started misidentifying themselves even more deeply with who they were.

I think,

Therefore I am.

Thinking became very central.

Almost as if it was more than what it truly is.

We create thoughts.

We are the creator of thoughts.

We aren't the thoughts themselves.

If a thought disappeared for a minute,

We'd still be here.

We're the creator of the thoughts.

But somehow we got identified with our thoughts and with our emotions.

We started to think that our personalities,

Which are made of thoughts and emotions,

Were who we were.

They're absolutely not.

Again,

That's what we go through step by step in these 164 podcasts because it's not enough to affirm we're not those.

The second question is,

Okay,

Once I see that clearly,

How do I stop identifying?

What do I do?

How?

And in my life,

I didn't have a lot of answers to the how.

So these podcasts are what I found over the last 50 years on how to dissolve my misidentification with thinking and emotions.

How to just rest in my center as being.

Well,

Anyway,

Back to Descartes.

I think,

Therefore,

I am.

Was an error.

I am,

Therefore,

I am.

And it's interesting that when Moses asks God in Exodus 3,

Who are you?

What's your name?

God said,

I am that I am.

Or I am who I am.

Pretty much the same thing.

I am,

Therefore,

I am.

That's who you are.

Simple as that.

Because of this misidentification into thoughts,

I think that might have had something to do with how we misidentified with other objects like bodies.

Like when the body dies,

Then people die.

No.

That beings die?

No,

Being never dies.

I think it was somehow associated with something like that.

Now,

Funny enough,

All the religions take Christianity.

One of the most central themes of Christianity is you don't die.

Jesus didn't die.

He was tortured,

Pretty dead,

Buried in a cave.

Everybody thought he's dead.

And what happened?

He pops back out.

Many different times.

People saw him.

They touched him.

He's alive again.

His best friend,

Lazarus,

Also died previously.

Jesus wept.

Shortest verse in the Bible,

By the way.

Jesus wept.

Because he loved his friend,

Lazarus.

But you remember the story.

He raised him from the dead.

So Lazarus wasn't dead,

But he died.

But then he wasn't dead.

And in the Bible,

They run around and ask,

John,

Are you Isaiah?

Are you Ezekiel?

So they believed you didn't die because they wouldn't be asking John the Baptist or Jesus if they were Ezekiel or Isaiah if they thought you died.

Ezekiel and Isaiah,

By the way,

Were prophets who had passed away 600 years or so ago.

So if you're trying to say there's no such thing as reincarnation and yet you're saying John the Baptist or Jesus might be Isaiah or Ezekiel,

Well,

You've got some explaining to do.

So in fact,

Not too many people really believe you do die.

That's true with every,

Well,

I'll say most religions.

Hinduism,

Reincarnation,

Buddhism,

Reincarnation,

The Dalai Lama,

He's reincarnating all the time.

Shintoism,

You connect to your ancestors,

Ancestor worship.

A lot of religions in China,

You connect to your ancestors,

You talk to them.

So it's very unusual to be so disconnected from our beingness.

In our culture we are and I think it might be because of we've made some mistakes,

We've misidentified.

But as a therapist,

What I noticed was wherever I was is where I was.

That never changed.

Wherever I am,

I am.

So why do I suddenly think after my body dies,

I'll quit being wherever I am.

I'm going to be in some realm,

Somewhere.

That's where I am.

And guess what?

I take with me who I am,

Just like I do in this world.

Wherever I go,

I take myself with me.

My problems and my centeredness.

To the degree I haven't dissolved my problems,

I take them with me.

The same as after the body dies,

We take whoever we are as well as any problems we haven't released,

We take them with us.

Wherever we go.

Just like we do in this world.

You know,

In this world,

As we're becoming connected to ourselves,

We are light.

So we're always headed towards the light.

We're letting go into the light,

Which is who we are.

When somebody passes,

You always hear they're told,

Go to the light,

Go to the light,

Go to the light.

It's the same.

There is no difference between now and later.

Ram Dass said something,

And then I'm going to go on to something more specific to answer your question,

Therese.

But Ram Dass spent some time talking to a channel,

A manual,

And he found it very helpful to him after he had been to India,

And after he had been with his guru,

Neem Kroli Baba,

And he was always connected to Neem Kroli Baba his entire life.

But he started talking to this channel,

A manual,

And as you probably know,

Ram Dass worked a lot with death and dying,

And he asked Immanuel about it,

This entity,

Do you have any message about death and dying?

And Immanuel said,

Tell them that dying is perfectly safe.

I just think that's so funny and so true.

Let's talk about it a little bit more in a different way.

So,

I lived in Austin for 30 years,

And sometime around 1993,

I was working with a man who lived in San Antonio,

And at the end of our work together,

I was surprised,

But he handed me this channeled material.

And he said,

I'm a deacon in a big Baptist church in San Antonio.

There's not a whole lot I can do with this.

My mother-in-law's hand started twitching in the middle of the night,

And she,

Being a good church lady,

Was completely freaked out about it,

And didn't know what to do because she felt like writing.

So she got a piece of paper and put a pen in her hand,

And her hand started moving.

And this is a copy of some of the early movements.

You just see the scribbling.

And then it starts turning into words,

Which really was starting to freak her out.

And then it got definitely into words,

Which totally freaked her out.

And what was happening was her husband,

Guy,

Who died in 1969,

Started communicating with her in 1972.

And he started moving her hand and telling her what it was like to be where he was.

Now,

Being a good church lady,

That was scary.

Edgar Cayce channeled a lot,

And he was so afraid of it because he was a very fundamentalist Christian that he hired a stenographer to write down everything he said because he wanted to read it because he thought it might be Satan coming through him.

Because you don't do that kind of thing in church,

You know.

Anyway,

Either did this lady.

So she wrote,

You'll see on these pages perhaps,

I'm holding them up to the camera,

But she would write when her hand started moving,

And she would write when it began,

What the day was,

What the year was,

And when it ended.

And usually it happens for a brief amount of time,

An hour or so.

And she would,

Every night or whenever it happened,

She would document it and then later they typed it up.

So he handed me this.

And we just take it with a grain of salt.

As I said,

Stick with your awakening,

You're good.

You see all this very clearly.

Anyway,

However,

It is interesting and it fits with a lot of other things you've heard.

So,

I'm going to talk about it for a minute.

I'm going to read you a couple of passages or a few passages because they connect to what you said,

Therese.

Oh,

By the way,

Guy and his wife decided to call this Love's Answer from Eternity by Guy Chester Belt.

He's the one who passed away.

And I'm bringing this up,

Therese,

Because you mentioned you set up the urn and suddenly these interesting things started to happen.

The crystal turned to gratitude,

The heart spun around,

Things like that.

And you were wondering,

Wow,

That's interesting.

That's strange.

Well,

Guy Chester Belt writes to his wife or he's moving her hand and he says,

I will tell you how I do this.

It's not like thought transference because we are in two different types of light substance.

Yours is dense.

Ours isn't.

I have to come to your plane of being to see you,

But ordinarily I couldn't impress you that I was there because of the density.

Somehow I'm helped to densify myself so I'm able to be like half spirit and half physical for a short time to write through you.

It was hard to impress you.

That is to move her hand.

It was hard to impress you.

I was there,

But once you knew it wasn't such hard work.

You are very good to work with now,

Though.

Let's continue on.

So your stepdaughter very well could have been moving those crystals.

Then you mentioned that she communicated to you in a dream,

Therese.

And he says,

Be still and attune yourself to me.

I can talk to you mentally now,

Which I will do.

Also,

You know,

We spend our nights together here learning and helping others while they sleep.

By the way,

He did say it was helpful for her to stop and he actually used the word meditate for a minimum of 15 minutes a day to quiet her mind so that he could communicate.

He said her mind was too active.

So,

Therese,

You had that dream of your stepdaughter saying,

I'm here,

I'm right here,

I'm right here.

That's how somebody on the other side communicates.

He goes on to say,

Let me write how we here feel about always being relegated to the ranks of the dead.

This offends us greatly because we are not dead in any way.

But because we have passed on into a higher vibration beyond your visual range,

You say we are gone.

No,

We are not gone.

Just here like always.

You had better train yourselves to think differently about us.

You can be sure we are not in any way quote unquote dead or gone or asleep or a lot of other things you say about us.

You should say that we have left this plane of being,

Not that we are dead.

So,

When your stepdaughter Therese said,

I'm right here,

I'm right here,

I'm here.

It's the same way.

Guy said that in a different place.

He said,

We can see you.

You just can't see us.

But we're right next to you.

And you can't hear us.

We're in a higher vibration and you just can't take it in.

But we can take in you.

So it's a bit frustrating at times.

Since you're connected,

He did say though that just your natural love for them,

They can feel it and it feels so good and it's really helpful to them.

So,

They can see us and they can also feel us.

And they feel your love.

Anna feels your love,

Therese.

At the same time,

He did say that they don't hang around forever.

They do when you need them,

But just like you here,

You're working on things that you need to work on in this life,

In this realm.

He said that's what they do.

They have to go on and work on what they have to work on in their realm.

It's the same as here.

If you got problems here,

You work on them.

If you want to be awake,

Wherever other realm you go to,

You keep working on what you got left.

So they go back and forth,

But they keep working on their stuff.

He says,

Eternal life is one truth you better learn there,

Here on earth.

You can't believe all the poor souls in confusion here.

Not believing they exist eternally,

They are shocked to be alive,

Though their bodies are dead.

Years can be wasted just for the lack of this great truth.

A lot of times,

He says that they're wandering around because they don't quite understand they're not dead,

But in another realm.

They think they're still in this realm.

He goes on to say,

Let me tell you how we send new souls here to the hospital,

You'd say.

It is a large building called the place of rest.

The new arrivals,

Who were sick a very long time,

Who needed a period of adjustment,

Go there.

They sleep a while,

And they are attended by older souls who console them when they eventually wake up,

And who then teach them about their new world.

We also have rescue teams.

They attend to those who arrive here through accident or sudden death of some kind.

Those thrown out of their body abruptly are in shock,

And must have an explanation as to where they are,

And how they got here.

It's hard for them to believe that they are quote unquote dead when they feel so alive.

It is very confusing for them,

Unless they know something about our life before they come here.

And I'll read you a couple more things,

And then we'll move on.

He says,

Help me tell how it is here.

It is so beautiful,

Like Earth,

But a thousand times more lovely.

Colors are so vibrant and living.

They are like love.

Love is living.

And then one last one.

He says,

It is hard to tell you about my here,

Because it's lovelier than words can describe.

Trees,

Flowers,

Grass,

Birds,

So tremendous Earth can't compare to this for beauty.

Goes on to say,

I wish now I had learned more there.

It's harder to unlearn on this plane.

Where he is now,

It's harder to let go of your hurts and troubles over there.

So this plane,

As difficult as it is,

That's the point.

Earth is difficult,

But that's good,

Because we can get our hands on our problems and let them go.

In other realms,

It's much harder,

And I've heard that before.

He says,

Once you accept something as a truth,

And it isn't,

It is rooted in your consciousness so deeply,

It is very difficult to pull up.

It's easier to adjust and change your thinking there before you get here.

So,

We're in a good place,

As difficult as it is.

He goes on to say one more thing on this page.

Now we shall see how we should be careful not to say or do anything to hurt another.

If we do,

Our soul records this hurt,

And we have to suffer a like hurt,

Because we feel what we do.

We hurt.

Until we realize hurting is bad,

And hastens to make amends,

If possible.

He says,

I'll paraphrase,

He said,

If you take it to heart and change,

And you're truly sorry,

Even if you've done hurtful things,

And you change,

Or if somebody's done something hurtful to you and you forgive them,

Then you don't have to complete your karma.

The karma is completed in the forgiveness and in the repentance,

Or the taking it to heart,

If you're the one that does difficult things to others.

He said,

Ask your deepest being for forgiveness,

Or express sorrow,

And once you're connected to your deeper self,

You let go,

And you're past karma.

So that's what everybody experiences in awakening,

Too.

He actually uses the word father,

Because that's his background,

And what he feels comfortable with,

You can use deepest being,

Or God,

Or father,

Or light,

Or whatever resonates with you.

When we rest in the light that we are,

And beyond,

Everything else that's tension,

Hurt,

Trouble,

We let it go,

Because it's not who we are.

And in that letting go,

If you want to say we're reborn,

Our personality begins to form from peace,

Love,

And well-being,

Rather than from hurt,

Fear,

And anger.

Now some other interesting things that I'll just say real quickly about what he says,

And then I want to move on to my friend who died many times,

And let you know what he said.

What Guy goes on to say is that when they learn over there,

A high being comes to them,

And they might even gather in groups,

And they learn by experiencing it.

Like here,

We might learn in our head,

We might learn thoughts.

He says there they learn in their body.

They know something.

They know it.

And if they want to go anywhere in time,

They can go there,

And they can experience any historical event,

Or any event that's occurred,

And they can feel it,

They can see it,

They can know it,

Because they're there.

So they learn through direct experience,

Really.

They absorb what the high being shares with them.

And by knowing it on the inside,

They learn.

He says one of the most difficult things when you pass on is when you think something,

It manifests.

So he said,

A lot of people in our world are incessant thinkers.

They haven't learned to stop thinking,

Just being.

So thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

It puts you into a vortex.

You start spinning and spinning and spinning because you're creating things left and right.

They're happening.

Every time you have a thought,

You're creating that thing.

So there's a learning period to just stop it.

Just be.

Just stop.

Settle down.

Stop.

But isn't that what meditation is?

Isn't that what we do in our process of awakening?

And that's why he tells people,

Do this ahead of time before you get there.

Wherever you go,

Do it ahead of time.

He said it's also interesting because there's no such thing as time.

So there's no rush.

There's no sleeping.

You don't get tired.

You don't need food.

But you have spirit bodies.

And he said at least he does in his realm.

Eternity is so big,

I'm not sure about all the ins and outs,

But I'm just letting you know what he says.

He was joking with his wife.

He passed on when I think he was around 82 or 86 or something like that.

He was sort of bragging to his wife.

He said,

I'm 49 here.

I'm at the prime of my body because his spiritual body,

Which looks like his body here,

Except it's healthy and young and at its peak.

So he can express himself through his physical body on a spiritual level,

Which is quite different than our dense bodies here,

But he's in a healthy place.

He says clothes are created by thought because you can manifest things whatever you think.

You just think what kind of clothes you want and you've got them on.

He said even though they don't need to eat,

Sometimes they do anyway,

Just for social reasons.

They gather together in that way.

Okay.

So my friend who died,

Joe,

When I went to India,

I came back and the power of my guru came through me extremely powerfully and people would come every week and they would experience this power and energy.

So it was quite a thing in Austin for a long,

Long time.

It got to be a thing,

Sort of an event.

In fact,

At the place where we met,

One of the people that worked where we rented the room,

He came upstairs.

There were so many people he was afraid the room might collapse.

He said I might have to limit the number of people who would come.

He himself ended up coming himself.

So they were on the roof,

They were out the windows.

It was a thing.

Well,

It attracted a lot of attention and a lot of people would come.

One of them was Joe and that's how I met him.

And he asked to talk to me and we did and he said,

You know,

There's something about my heart.

It gives out from time to time and I quote unquote die.

He said,

They've pulled the sheet over me.

The emergency people,

They know he's dead.

He said he goes outside of his physical body.

He can hear what people are talking down the hall or next door or he can go wherever he wants to go and he can recount it to people later and it turns out,

Yes,

That's true.

He is accurate.

So he said,

You know,

The first time I died,

It's a little confusing.

Just like Guy said.

He said it was a little confusing.

I didn't know what to make of it.

I went towards the light.

But there's a lot of confusion and but he said,

Once you've died three or four times,

You kind of get used to it and you learn the lay of the land.

So he said,

I want to tell you what happens and after he told me at a later date,

He came and spoke to our group because I wanted him to because it was so interesting.

When you die,

He said,

It's like your being is inside of a bunch of filters and these filters,

Like sunglasses,

But lots of them,

You look through them and it gives you the experience of your life and as you die,

You go up a fiber optic cable is how he described it.

It's like that and the further you get away from your filters,

The more free and expansive you become because you're not confined by this little mind,

By our thinking mind,

Our personality.

You start to expand and become one.

The further up the fiber optic,

It gets more open and more open and more open.

You're just falling through space.

It's like skydiving without a parachute and there's nothing to hit.

There is no ground.

It's just infinite and it's well-being and happiness and joy and you start becoming one with everything.

The further you fall,

The more you open up,

The more one you are with everything and it feels so good and he didn't want to come back,

But something called him back and he started,

I guess,

Each of those four or five times and he started coming back down through the fiber optic cable and he said,

You know,

There are branches off of the cable and you can go through any branch and you can live any life in history just like Guy said,

Guy in the channel material we just talked about,

Guy Belt.

He said,

You can go through the fiber optic cable and you can go into,

Instead of your old filters,

You can go into a new filter.

You could be Cleopatra,

You could be Caesar,

You could be whoever you want to be and you can experience history that way.

You can experience that and you can experience any life you want.

He called it a library.

He said,

It's like a library.

You can go anywhere and learn that way.

You can learn anything you want.

You can have any experience you want.

But,

For,

I guess for karmic reasons,

You're often drawn back to your quote unquote old physical body,

Your old filters.

As you go down that fiber optic cable,

He said,

He felt more and more confined.

It got tighter and tighter and it felt so good when he was out of it,

But as he went into his back into his body and his filters,

It felt like very confined and very painful and very like a tight shoe that doesn't fit.

It hurts.

Those are my words.

I'm translating what the feeling I got as he described it to me.

So that's what Joe,

That's what Joe had to say about it.

Now as far as my psychotherapy practice,

I'll say this.

I worked a lot with hypnosis back in the day,

Quite a bit,

And I was an expert at it.

So,

I devised some therapies that had a blend of hypnosis and traditional therapy and it would speed things along.

And so I had a lot of medical doctors in Austin that would send me people and I met all sorts of the who's who of Austin in my private practice and some of them,

A very small percentage,

Maybe 5% of the people who came and saw me,

Wanted to do a past life regression so we would,

But traditionally what I would typically do is when somebody came in and they were anxious which is what I worked with the most probably we would go back in time to the source of their anxiety,

Like when did you first what happened when you first became anxious what is the root of this anxiety that you're feeling today I would ask them to go there and they would.

I remember one lady said she was the head of the Humane Society in a different city outside of Austin and she was afraid of horses and she came to see me and wanted to know why was she afraid of horses?

She had just an irrational fear of horses and she said look I want to find out I understand you can take me back to the source of it but I want you to know I do not believe in past lives I don't want anything to do with that and I didn't usually do past lives,

I don't know but she had heard it somewhere and I said yeah,

No,

No,

No,

No past lives,

No so we regressed back to the source of her anxiety with horses and to my horror we went into a past life and in that past life she was working with horses she was jumping with show horses and her leg got caught in a stirrup and she was drugged to her death so she became afraid of horses in this life,

She carried it with her,

Like I said wherever you go,

There you are whatever you left this life with unresolved,

You take to wherever you go,

Maybe that's a little bit where I got that because I just observed it,

Both in this life and in my therapy practice when people did this but so often they would go into these past lives and it was very interesting and it was very helpful to them,

They could get their hands on what a current problem was somehow they could relax about it if they could see where it began,

Oh I got killed in a war or oh this happened or oh this person treated me this way and I carried it with me oh now that I see it it doesn't make any sense for me anymore let me let it go so death and dying,

No I don't think so I don't think there is in fact like I said I know there is not but I'm just rhetorically saying that I like what Voltaire said,

He said it's not more surprising to be born twice as once all of nature is a resurrection and you think about it isn't it kind of odd to be born once why anybody born once,

Ok what does that have to do with the body we know a body starts,

We know it ends but being born consciousness,

What's that about how did I get here how did I get in this body,

Oh my we're timeless,

We're being we're part of the one well I will say this you can go to podcast 81 and somebody asked me what my experience was when Archangel Michael and Jesus appeared to me,

I mean Jesus again was supposed to be dead and he's very much alive in fact every day that I go for a walk which I do most every day Jesus is there right next to me I can see him I can turn and there he is now you might think it's odd but there's no reason to talk to him we're all,

You,

Me everybody,

Jesus we're all one no need for talking I mean I like it,

He's my friend he doesn't ask me quit,

Now sometimes if I'm in a real bind I might ask him something but generally generally not but he's very much alive and what Guy Belt was saying when he said that it's much easier in this reality to work on problems than in other realities,

Especially the one he was speaking from when Jesus did appear to me he showed me,

And it's in that podcast that I had four or five little black dots,

Little tiny dots,

And then he put an overlay of his soul on top of my soul like a transparency and the only difference was those three or four five black dots,

And he told me,

He said there's no difference between you and me except for these three or four or five little black dots,

Hard to believe to me at the time that was hard for me to believe but he showed it to me and I'll tell you those little black dots in this reality seem like the world to me they seem like icebergs they are so huge and have been now,

Over the last 50 years they've melted considerably so that I've become clear completely clear,

No still more melting,

But very clear yes compared to where I was 50 years ago it used to be like I was submerged by lots of giant icebergs and once one melted,

I couldn't even tell the difference because there was another one on top of it those are our pains,

Our suffering our hurts and we're all alike and I'm bringing this up because somebody has written in before saying,

Hey as soon as one problem melts away I feel like there's another and then there's another and that is true until it's not until they become less and less and less and less well that's how it feels like to me now they still come but it's not like icebergs it's like ice cubes and it's not all ice it's just little bits of ice here and there mostly being,

Mostly clarity and you don't have to dissolve all of the ice all of your problems to see clearly you have to just dissolve enough so that there's just a little delusions floating around but not a whole wall of delusions that you're trying to see through when there's just a little here and there you just see right through them you see between them,

Around them and through them so somebody else in one of the other podcasts they were taken in spirit way up into outer space and they looked down on the earth and they could see their life and they were with the spirit being and they saw in their life little black dots and the spirit being told them that's what you need to release you're on earth to release those little black dots that's your life purpose in a way or one strong part of it so what Guy Belt said in this realm it's easier to work on things than in other realms so we take advantage of all of our suffering it's actually a blessing so I've seen other people my father when he passed away I saw him he was smiling showing me that he was good because he suffered a lot in this life I had a friend in Austin my friend's father owned the Atlas Van Lines in Austin and they moved a lot of heavy equipment and he got underneath some of the equipment and he'd been doing it for decades and decades and decades and something shifted and he was crushed and it was a surprise to him I know because he appeared to me after and he shrugged and he just kind of had his eyes open he shrugged like wow I didn't see that coming and he smiled I'm fine in other cultures like Native American or as I mentioned Japanese or Chinese or Hindu or Buddhist because they don't block out they can see in other realms most cultures allow themselves to see the Celts at the end of harvest they had a holiday called Samhain and it means summer's end and it occurred on October 31st and on October 31st they noticed that the realms the veils between realms became thin very thin that time of year and the clear Celts could see through those realms and they could see beings in the other realms like Guy Belt or whoever else has passed on,

They could see them and later October 31st became what we know as Halloween and because they could see other realms Halloween got imbued with skeletons and spirits and things like that that we put in our front yard I was born on Halloween so I like that I like to be able to see in other realms later that date was co-opted by the Catholic Church and it on November 1st was All Saints Day and Halloween was Hallowed Eve right before All Saints Day and the saints had also passed on so they often in these spiritual traditions they take the best of what they are taking over and they put them together so that the local people feel comfortable and so it's also about deep spirituality so in my private practice I saw a lady named Mary or I'll call her Mary and I'll just mention this one she was in my office in Austin and just like all the other people I saw she had some issues that she wanted to resolve and I just had her close her eyes and let go and I was talking to her I was just coaching her through it counting from 10 back down to 0 you've let everything go and I can't quite remember this was 20-30 years ago but something along those lines but what I do remember is as I was talking to her suddenly she corrected me and she said no the words you're using imply boundaries and there's no such thing as boundaries that's a human concept or that's a concept of the mind well she became so clear because she dropped her personality and only was speaking from being and it was exquisitely clear I really had to I saw her for a long time and I had to bite my tongue from asking her personal questions that I was curious about she was so clear this kind of thing happened a decent amount of time on different levels of clarity I think she was maybe the most clear that I worked with and where she was there was not this kind of misguided idea of death and life and ending and starting meaning it's all one it's all one,

It never stops eternity never stops we are just one slice of eternity right now and it's a bit presumptuous of us because we're here and we're so important that when our body stops that suddenly it stops or our being stops like what's that about how do we even get ourselves in that kind of arrogant mindset it's misguided and it's because everybody thinks that way we all do it,

It's just like well it's what I was taught it's what everybody thinks,

Everybody's talking about it they're all saying we died but no the body dies so I want to make that very very clear distinction in awakening the being is eternal so this podcast is a little bit different than other ones because I'm talking about a lot of external things and all the other podcasts,

The other 164 pretty much are all internal,

How to let go how to see clearly,

How to be awake this one I've talked a little bit about that but it's mostly about external things because I remember as I've gone through my decades it's helpful it's helpful to build trust to hear about these external things so that I can let go a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and as I let go a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more I become more open and as I become more open I become more awake so there's many paths to awakening external ones and internal ones every possible path is available to all of us so I hope that's helpful to you Therese oh I'll say one other thing that Guy Belt said,

He said when people come to their next realm and they're closed it's very difficult for them they do wander around quite a bit,

I'll just say for a long time because that's our verbiage in our realm and it's hard to reach them because they're closed they've made up their mind this is what I believe he suggests that we be open but that's the path of awakening is being open being is open the only thing that's limited is a very useful tool called the mind,

It is useful but the mind is as Thomas Jefferson said thoughts are simply hallucinations that we create with our mind,

They're just hallucinations so let's not take them for more than they are they're helpful tools,

We can hallucinate you can hallucinate a pink cat right now and you see it in your mind it wasn't there before and now it is,

You could hallucinate,

Oh there is no such thing as an afterlife and now you've pictured it and there it is,

It's not true but if we believe our mind we actually become closed it's the undoing of all those past conditioning that the path of awakening is about and in that path of awakening we see as Guy Belt says,

There is no death,

It's just people pass on with a different body than the body they used in this life it's only the body that dies,

That's the only thing we know,

Is the body is dead yep it's dead,

It started it died that's all we know,

All the rest we make up oh we died with it no proof of that,

That's just a made up thing,

Who said that?

Every indication is that's not true Therese says this is such a helpful,

Hopeful message and so interesting thank you Therese for bringing it up thank you all it's so good to see you take care,

I look forward to seeing you soon bye