TRANSITION
WE KNOW that the Truth will open your spiritual eyes and your understanding, and you will know that what seemed to you a loss at the time is no longer to be considered such. You will learn that those who go through the change called death are really passing through a transition, the soul giving up the body temple, which for some reason or other it cannot longer express through or bring into health. Your dear one is not gone away anywhere. He is abiding in the heart of the Father, and you have learned that the Father is omnipresent. And so all His children are just where their own consciousness draws and holds them, whether they are functioning in the physical or have temporarily laid aside the flesh body.
It will help you to know that souls keep on being re-embodied as children until they come into the Christ consciousness and have perfect dominion over mind and body and affairs. Your dear one may already be building a new body temple in which to come among us to learn more lessons and further unfold the God qualities in his faculties and powers.
In understanding the law of life and coming into the light of Truth, we give up many of our old conceptions of God and of ourselves and of life here and “hereafter.” We find that spiritual unity and love and expression are eternal. And we cease to grieve when a dear one has gone from our sense sight and human surroundings. We enter into the inner place of light and peace, and know that the Father is helping that one to do just what his own soul requires—just as He is ever helping us.
Your hearing your dear one’s voice in the night may have been the result of your own subconscious yearning and desire to hear him and to know he was near. Or it may have been his soul’s desire and effort to reach your consciousness and comfort you. The soul of an individual is consciousness, you know; and those who are spiritually awake can direct their thinking and reach those who are near to them or receptive. His thoughts of love and comfort could reach you during the stillness of your intellect and your faculties could register the thoughts and radiations of love and report them to the intellect; and you felt that you actually heard the voice. This will make you to know that hearing is mental and that the ears are but instruments to catch and radiate the things heard to the various parts of the body consciousness and the intellect.
It was not necessary for you to answer. Your dear one felt your response and knew that all was well. It is not wise or right to cling to those who have gone from the body. It tends to bind them to old and past experiences and environment, and delays possibly their turning to the Father for divine guidance and adjustment and further progress.
Living with memories isn’t fulfilling God’s plan of your life. God is life, within you, eagerly seeking unity with other life, yearning to picture forth the health and joy and strength and usefulness that there is in all God life. God is love that must be converted into loving—loving things of the present, those about you, the thoughts and words and works that are adding to the wealth and peace and beauty of the world now.
Dear, would it shock you if I told you I do not really believe that those souls whom you have known as friends in the past—and who failed to understand and conform to the divine law of life so that they could stay with the body and work out the divine harmony of His kingdom at the time you knew them in the flesh—are in the least interested in keeping up the old connections and friendships! Why, they are no doubt awake to the fact that they lacked much in the way of light and power and life, and they are surely much more interested in getting at the vital Truth and its application, so that they shall not again fall short and be obliged to change their environment and rebuild a body temple for further expression! These souls who pass through the transition that is termed death are not nearly so likely to crystallize in the past as are some of us who stay on, looking toward the past for our interest and happiness. They must have found it necessary to wake up and get hold of new ideas and make new friendships, to give them inspiration and help.
So bless the past and the old friendships, and turn from them, knowing that they are not the vital issue now. All that another has meant to you has left its imprint upon your soul so that you profit by it daily. And this is all that is of value to you.
There is no reason to suppose that a soul out of the physical body is not aware of what is going on about it. At least, since the soul is consciousness, it is most reasonable to assume that it is aware of all that really interests it and all that it desires to identify itself with.
One who had been spiritually awake and active in soul and body would not be likely to fall asleep even though the body were for some reason given up. Such a one would be on the alert to satisfy his soul hunger and to appreciate all that he could experience without the flesh and the centers of physical structure which his centers of consciousness had built.
It is a sorrow to have a loved one go through the experience of death. But we show a greater love for our dear one by refusing to hang on to the sorrow and by turning the undivided attention to learning how better to live by the divine law, and how to help others to avoid the experience of death. Your son would not have you clinging to him in thought; nor would he wish you to come to him through death. He is a splendid soul, and would have you learn the Truth and live it here and now.
Instead of thinking about going to him, out of the body, begin to be glad that he is coming into the body again, in the splendid way all souls have of getting into the physical—as a babe. The only way by which we shall ever be eternally united with our loved ones is to come into the Jesus Christ consciousness of life. Learn to keep the divine law of life, which means the renewal and transformation of the physical body, so that spirit, soul, and body may remain unified, and the righteous self-expression in all three departments of being may continue.
We are with you constantly, dear, to help you to realize that all is well. Your dear one did not know how to let go of the limitations into which her mind had got, nor how to renew and build up her body. And so to her it is a rest, and an opportunity, to lay aside the body for a time and to break the conscious connection with things going on around her, until the divine urge within her again prompts her to build the body temple and take up lessons here in the physical.
If your mother had gone away on a vacation and you knew she was in loving hands, you would not be grieved or worried, would you? Well, now, that is just what has taken place. She is resting from the suffering and the problems that she did not know how to manage. She is in the presence of God, just as you are; and the best way to show your love for her is just to let go of all human longing and all sense of loss, so that this soul who welcomed you as a babe and who has cared for you, may rest assured all is well with you. For your mother has just gone into a different schoolroom of life, where the divine Father-Mother is the teacher.
