Many lives, many deaths - trust that it's okay..

Hi ATS,

I'm going to relate a simple dream experience that I had last night, which I hope will be an encouragement to many of you, to better understand that our lives are in the hands of beings mightier than ourselves, indeed that the highest Being is intricately involved with you personally. Indeed, that you are safe, that the greater, enormous universe of which we are a part, is not too large or too complex that you could ever be truly 'lost' in the sense of being nowhere to be found by that highest Being when the ultimate moment of our lives finally comes.

I have experienced a lot of suffering in my life. I'm not seeking attention, it's simply a true fact. I went through Hell as a teenager due to bad decisions that I made, some of which was a response to high strangeness, some of which was entirely my own fault. I ended up being what you might term psycho-spiritually 'lost' - there was nothing of value in my life, I was wasting away & everyone I had ever cared about had abandoned me. This was again, understandable because of the choices I had made. I became a Christian because of a profound experience I had of God's interjection into my life circumstances, in response to a desperate prayer. Basically, God showed up when I called on Him. I had not known whether He existed, but my desperation turned into joy, when I was powerfully made aware of His sovereign capability to act in order to save someone from the worst possible circumstances a person might find themselves in as a result of a combination of intiial conditions & personal choices. Since becoming a Christian, suffering ceased for a long time, but several years later I was unfortunate enough to be injured at work, and a long descent into severe neuropathic, arthralgic & fibromyalgic pain began, my neurology had been damaged by undiagnosed seizures, leading to a condition named central pain syndrome. This affects me to this day, and every single inexorable day is a battle. You can never 'get used to' the pain, because different parts of the body express the worst pain on different days, even at different times on the same day. So now, you have an idea of the sort of suffering I have encountered in my life.

When my new start in life as a spiritual person began all those years ago, I had a dream which reassured me of life beyond death, and for many years that sustained me, I felt certain (& still do) that life will continue beyond the point of death. But it was a singular experience, and I hadn't quite experienced anything like it again, until last night. Last night, I had a very long & complex dream, which basically once again reassured me of life beyond death - but furthermore, it showed me that there are in fact many ways that a person can experience the process of dying - in last night's dream I died a total of three times, and was brought back to life three times. After each death, I was taken to one of my 'three parents' (my mum, my dad, and my stepmum). These are the three of four parents who I know have at least some love for me. My stepdad does not like me in the slightest, so this seems to be why he wasn't included in the sequence. After each death & resurrection, I saw my parents as they were in an idealised representation of their past circumstances with me - the time in life when they were most happy with life generally, when that happiness also intersected with the experience of knowing me during their life. In each case I was able to express to them (as my adult self) that I had died, and that I had been shown some part of the life & love they had lived, and each encounter was joyous, restorative, redemptive. In each situation they became more fully aware of the way that life persists after death, and this brought them comfort - they also found personal healing through their realisation that I loved & valued them deeply, despite the mistakes which I was aware they had made in their interactions with me as a child, now being an adult & thus being able to view the past through the lens of an adult. Furthermore, they were released of any sense of guilt, and on several occasions there were tears of joy, as we realised that our lives were in the hands of forces which loved & valued us enough to record & revisit any & all emotions, let alone events, so that healing could be found. And the overarching 'plan', that mysterious & unspeakable truth of a divine order, the thread of meaning through our past, present & future - it became real to us in those moments, and all fear departed.

Rather than try to explain each death experience in great detail, I will summarise & say that there was one which felt like a phasing of life into death, a transition which seemed as though one side were receding & one was growing in my awareness, like a soft fade out/fade in, like something from a movie. A second felt like a derealisation, where I had let go of fear during an experience which was something symbolised like an overdose of medication, which wasn't deliberate, and which had me falling over & over myself momentarily, when I let go of holding onto life - though this was not scary, and there was a sense of release which was a relief, as this experience was connected to my constant pain, and the final end of all pain, forever. A third felt like stepping through a door, the quickest you can imagine, I barely knew it had happened until I was back again, stepping back through time to find a moment of healing with one of my parents.

All in all, I want this to be an encouragement, and an invitation. Be assured that as I always say, God is far more merciful than many Christians would have us believe. He is sovereign over every experience, every emotion, every fear & all the tears you have cried. There is a thread of meaning & purpose through each aspect of your life, every tiny detail is important, and every interaction is sacred, if you find what you are supposed to find when you analyse each one in the moment. Courage where there is aggression, forgiveness where there is bitterness, grace where there is hope, peace where there is fear.

Please trust in God, please accept yourself & your circumstances. Take a step into the unknown, and remember that when the time comes, however your transition manifests, you are a whisper of a heartbeat away from the divine. Reach out & find the hand of grace, because it is there for you now, and always.

Godspeed,


FITO.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Welp. Dreams are a good window into your subconscious. That's about it. I'd do some inner perspective contemplation if I were you, and troubled by my dreams. Whenever I have a dream that I remember when I'm around coffee time in the AM, I usually try to dissect it and find out why I'm thinking of certain aspects of it. Like the setting would be one, "why this place? Why this time?" People would be another- "why was she in my dream?" And then overall themes and conversations, and other things.

I really don't put any weight on people's dreams being prophetic at all, because that's just silly talk. Sometimes they can answer questions we have because our subconscious knows answers we haven't realized yet.

a reply to: Iconic

I would have thought you could tell that this dream a) Wasn't supposed to be prophetic, and b) Obviously it did indeed address subconscious issues, and c) By the very fact that I've recorded it I've analysed it..

Your comment seems a bit pessimistic, in light of an experience that was profoundly joyous & basically uplifting for anyone who ever feared the death process - I shared it so others can read it & be encouraged, and I think the giver of dreams (whether you think that's God or our subconscious higher self) intends that we talk about them, where they may be of benefit to others.

It feels to me that you have thinned the veil quite well. Thank you for sharing such a deep and profound experience.

a reply to: Iconic
Thanks to the OP for sharing your thoughts. I understand the purpose of your post. Spirituality is a big part of my life. I have my own version that works for me . I do not follow any certain religion. I use mix of all. That is what helps me grow as a person. I tend to agree with Iconic on the subject of dreams in general. I think each one of us has dreams that represent different things to each of us. For instance. I have certain dreams when I am stressed and I have learned to interpret them as such. Sometimes in my conscious state the stressors are easy to recognize and I deal with it on a conscious level. Sometimes I do not even know that I am stressed and that is where certain scenarios in a dream let me know I need to dig deeper to find out what is up. The same thing works in many areas of my conscious life. For me it is nothing mystical. It is just a way my subconscious mind is trying to help my conscious mind deal with my life.

On 4 July 2012 I died on my terrace and was brought back by ER team. I wish I could have stayed on the other side but as I was walking up the concrete stairs, almost at the top ready to walk through some of the largest pillars I have ever seen....then I woke up back in my body.

God shined brighter than the sun but without the heat of the sun. You can't look at him, he is too brightly shining.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

My wife was in hospice...as breast cancer took her life in her last days.

I stayed there with her and after a couple of days she went into a coma.
Early in the morning, while I was out getting coffee down the street...she came out of her coma and became conscious.

I arrived back at the hospice...and the nurses rushed over to me to tell me to hurry back to her room.
I ran down the halls to make it back to her...so I could hold her as she breathed her last breath on earth.

Her eyes were wide open as I held her, but they were looking directly in front of her...so I looked there too as I held her and told her how much I loved her. I saw a void and a light open in front of the opposite wall about six feet or so above the ground.

Her eyes were fixed on it...and she was seeing something or someone inside.
I could not see who or what was inside.
The nurse on the other side of her bed seemed to see nothing.

She looked back over to me and smiled...then looked back at the lighted void and closed her eyes for the last time as she was smiling.

When I looked back at the void from her, I watched her leave her body and go inside the void before it closed.
I had no doubt she was ready to go...but waited for me to return for one final goodbye...and I have no doubt in my mind she was seeing loved ones on the other side waiting for her...waiting for me.

This is 100% true.

a reply to: IAMTAT

That's a beautiful testimony, thank you for sharing. I have heard many descriptions of very, very similar encounters & exits from this world. Nurses quite frequently attest to the commonality of these experiences in their patients, though they don't always see what the patient is obviously seeing in their last days/moments. It's a wonderful truth, the grace towards us all.

This afternoon I realised that the three death experiences I had in the dream represent the three types of death we might expect any of us to have:

1 - The slow fade out/fade in = The death which is foreseen in advance, precipitated by a period of illness in which the person gets weaker & weaker in this world, coming into a gradual awareness of the onset of the death process, until that final point of stepping across the fuzzy boundary where the colours of this life bleed into the next one, until that person is finally no longer in this world.

2 - The oncoming death which is foreseen, and which cannot be avoided, which causes a brief time of potentially terrible fear, or at least, significant disorientation & perhaps disbelief that this could be happening to us, now, when we weren't ready, when we didn't intend anything bad to happen, when we didn't deliberately put ourselves at risk - though none of this changes the fact that death is rushing towards us. Examples could include bleeding out & knowing that there's no way you can survive, though you perhaps have a minute or two until it occurs. Another example could be an accidental overdose, as in my experience in this dream.

3 - The sudden, unexpected, even unrealised death, which happens without warning or pain, where you don't necessarily recognise that anything untoward is unfolding until things start to get distinctly unearthly, when you had thought you were just going about your day. Obvious examples include being struck very hard on the head/ having your whole body destroyed withouht anything more than a flash, such as with high kinetic force of a powerful bomb exploding near you.

I found it very interesting to realise that these three main types of death were incorporated into the dream fabric, and it makes me even more convinced that there is a purpose to this, that someone will find it to be a providential encouragement - or that one day, in the future, you will recall this, and reach for the hand of grace, at the time of death certainly - but ideally before.

"What I tell you now in the darkness, shout abroad when daybreak comes. What I whisper in your ear, shout from the housetops for all to hear!"

Matthew 10:27 New Living Translation

Thanks,


FITO.