The time is ripe for this discussion as we, and the Earth, progress in light ascension. (Photo credit)

What is life?

To know death, we need to know life.

A few decades ago (I’m writing from my memory of advanced biology course I took at school, so please excuse the lack of details), scientists wanted to find out what makes a life form different from a non-life form. So they simplified and studied the single cell creatures. They identified only two factors that distinguish single cell life forms from mere bubbles.

1. Life forms have cell walls that differentiate the inside of their body from the outside fluid. Life forms “know” what is me and what is not. This makes it possible to take in outside stuffs as nutrition of the inside and excrete what is not necessary. (Biologist Dr Bruce Lipton maintains cell membrane is like the brain that plays central role to sustain us.)
2. Life forms have chromosomes that enable them to replicate, or reproduce, themselves.

So they made an artificial life form with cell wall and transplanted chromosome. That was easy with genetic technology. But the “life form” was not alive. They gave it electric shock, etc, but just couldn’t bring it to life.

Conclusion: There is something invisible that makes organisms alive. Let’s call it life force.

We now jump to a more complex life form, humans. I say “jump” because I think there is a bit of a discrepancy somewhere along the line of biological evolution. We, too, live on life force. But with humans, I recognize the driving power as our souls. Our souls direct the intake of the life force. Is a soul made of life force and the two really are one? I don’t know.

What we can learn from this experiment, however, is the idea that death is the end of everything doesn’t make sense. The idea that everything about you is over when your heart stops beating and your brain stops giving electric waves is limited to the physical, visible function of the body. There is invisible part about you, the life force and the soul (or whatever you want to call it).

What is death?

Now you know there are macrophysics and microphysics, and scientists are trying to come up with the Theory of Everything (TOE) that explains both. So I can explain the relationship of the soul (spirit) and the body in two ways.

On the macro level, we can observe the soul and the body as separate beings. A soul gets inside the body at the baby’s first breath of life and leaves the body at death (spare various cases of soul shifts). So on this level, death is about our soul leaving the body.

On the micro level, the soul and the body are one. The soul is energy, and it can take a dense form of body, which is also energy. Death, then, is the resolution of this dense energy body to another form of energy. Think of the transformation of ice – water – steam. They are all the same stuff, but they look different and act differently. None is better than the other. If the ice puts down the steam because the steam is invisible, it would be ridiculous. So physically incarnated souls are no better than spirits without the body after their “death”.

How these two views can be reconciled neatly, I don’t know at this time.

But in either case, I see the essence of me, the soul, doesn’t die. “I” can leave the vehicle I’ve been driving (macro level explanation) or I can dissolve / transform the body to some other form of being (micro level explanation).

What matters is if I do it consciously or not.

Conscious vs accidental transition

In conscious transition, the “I” knows what I am doing. Despite the appearance of “death,” my consciousness keeps on seamlessly to another form of being.

But if the transition happens without your awareness, it would feel accidental, and you may feel like a victim. While you are on this side. (I believe that once the transition happens, we all get to figure out we are “okay”.) (I’m using the word “accidental” meaning not fully consciously controlled. It doesn’t mean the death is caused by accidents.)

Just to be sure, by conscious transition, I don’t mean suicide. What I mean is the conscious opting out. The majority of death is accidental and not fully conscious no matter how old the person is or whatever the cause of death is.

What happens in afterlife?

As Akashic Record Reading specialist, I am the expert in beforelife. I can tell you about your past lives and the place we go in between physical incarnations. Again, this is the macro level explanation.

What happens after this life is an interesting question for all of us alive today ^_^. Do we repeat what we’ve been doing, that is, cross over to the other side, review our life, rest, and come back later? (If you are interested in more details of the process on the other side, please check Dr Michael Newton’s “The Journal of Souls”) Can we choose not to incarnate any more? If so, are there any requirements, like a certain level of “enlightenment” or vibrational rate?

Our souls can keep going beyond physical deaths. But is physical immortality possible? If it’s possible, is it something you want?

How do you want it?

I’m opening up the discussion here because I think this is up to our free will. Let me sum up the possible options:

1. To die (most likely accidentally) and reincarnate, like we’ve been doing for eons of time
If you choose this option, why? Are there something you want to keep doing in the next life? Is this present life not long enough to do it? Are you postponing something? Or is it about helping others in this world and you can best do it as incarnated being?

2. To die (most likely accidentally) and not incarnate again
Again, why? Is your choice based on hate of this life and the world? Or is it simply because you’ve had plenty and even the good stuff is enough after certain time?

3. To consciously transition or transform your physical body to some other form of being
One of the other form of being is called lightbody. This is what I aspire to do. If you are into continuity, one thing we want to check is we are not choosing this out of fear of death.

4. To keep going in the same physical body
I guess this is what Robin at Let’s Live Forever! stands for. The physical body is just a form of energy, so rather than transforming it to another way of being, keep healing and mending it forever. If it involves temporary death, this may mean resurrection.

5. (Well, as I wrote, I don’t support this view, but if you still like it) To die is to die, the end, period. Death means end and there is nothing after that. Because this view doesn’t acknowledge the invisible being (soul), the death must be accidental. 

6. To die  and go to heaven. Or hell. Depending on the judgement.  I don’t get this idea because God is love and we are God, so why do we judge ourselves to reward or to punish?

7. We lose our individuality at the transition and merge with God.  I guess this can happen both with conscious transition and accidental one.  It’s based on a different level of . . . well, what shall I call it . . . model. 

Are there other options?

Further resources:
Here is a movie about afterlife (HT: Evita Ochel)

Here is a discussion about physical immortality on Oprah’s website, started by Dr Janni Lloyd. 

And is our perception of life and death “real” to begin with? Here is my own post of the nature of reality.

So let me know what you want in the comment. Also, let me know if thinking about life and death give you clarity about the meaning of life.

But let’s look at it from a different angle. They had me for four years. And I’m sure I was a beautiful and smart baby. Was it good having me as their child?

Or would they rather not have me at all if they knew they would lose me soon?

Shortly after I posted that article, I received the news that a friend of mine passed away. She was hospitalized when her health suddenly deteriorated and she chose not to be kept on tubes. She was in her early sixties.

She was the kind of person who vaguely remembered past deaths. I once talked with her about her Akashic Records, and she acknowledged she wasn’t so afraid of death. She knew it was essentially a transformational process.

Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, died at age 47.

Okay, before you get too depressed and click away, let me ask you: Is longer life better life? Many people seem to think so. But I think each of these lives are complete in their own right.

If a laundry machine breaks during the warranty period, we have the right to complain. It’s supposed to last at least for that period. But life is not like that.

Am I bringing up the cliched teaching of Carpe Diem (Seize the day)? No. That phrase carry the pessimistic and destructive energy. I’d say “Cherish the day.”

If you are blessed to have a child, enjoy that gift today. Their presence in your life now is a miracle. And of course, this is not just about a child. You don’t really know if your friends, family members, casual acquaintances, or your job, house, etc. are going to be here tomorrow.

You don’t really know if you are going to be here tomorrow.

I’m going to make this post deliberately short. It’s definitely the shortest post here at Yes to Me.

Does it make this post worthless?

In this post, I’d like to share one of my past life (again, the one before my Ascension soul shift) in which I died at the tender age of four. Perhaps it sheds some light about this sensitive issue about dealing with death, especially death of a young person.  (Photo by sugarmonster)  

Choosing birth setting in the cycle of reincarnation

I don’t remember exactly how I died. The point is I opted out early from that life because it wasn’t what I, as spirit, expected.

What went wrong? Was I abused and couldn’t take it any longer? Was I so ill that I chose to end life earlier than expected? Was I poor and starved, or was there a war?

Nope. On the contrary, I was born to a loving and affluent family. I was their precious only child. They wanted to shower me with all the love and care, and whatever money could buy. I think, by the time I was a four-year-old girl, they were dreaming up of my big wedding.

And that was the problem.

There was hardly any challenge.

We all choose our birth setting prior to life. Often, we dare to choose difficult situation to be born to because we believe it offers better learning opportunities for our life lessons. This is not always the case, however. Spirits honor our free will, so if we insist on being born to a certain setting, they let us do so. They may say something like, “Honey, you may not like that situation. It doesn’t align with your learning process.” but if you insist, they will let you do that. We have the right to learn by trial and error.

So evidently I chose this rich and loving family. I guess I was tired of tough life like the one that ended up with cruel persecution.

. . . and I quickly found out the advice of the counseling spirits was right. Again, this life as the only child of an affluent family was . . . boring. Perhaps the only way I could learn something in that setting was to run off with a guy from a different race and social status. But I didn’t like spending more than ten years growing up just to get to the point of potentially doing something like that. So I opted out. Sorry my mom and dad of that lifetime . . .

Is Lamborghini for everyone?

Let me explain by analogy. Do you want Lamborghini? It’s a nice sports car, isn’t it? Would you like to drive that if it was up to your choice?

Me choosing that rich family to be born to was like me choosing to drive a Lamborghini. The spirits told me I may not like it, but I insisted because it looked nice. And my friend Hunter told me it’s nice. So I wanted to try.

Now in real life at the car dealership, something would happen that would prevent me to actually buy a Lamborghini. Perhaps I’d notice it makes horrible engine noise as I test drive. Plus I’d notice I was getting unwanted attention. (I don’t like getting attention for the car I drive. I want attention to myself). So I’d walk off without buying it. Good grief.

In reincarnation, however, there is no test drive. So I dived into that experience. And quickly realized I messed up. Again, my mistake. No one did anything wrong.

The lesson

Does this mean all the children who die are choosing their own destiny to opt out? No. Does it mean it’s no good to give love and material gifts to children? No.

What I’m getting at with this story is that there may be a hidden meaning. Again, I know losing a loved one is tough. It’s essential we take good care of ourselves in such times. And, when you start feeling better, maybe you can regain the trust that things are working fine.

Here is another story I heard from a friend. Her friend gave birth to a baby who had birth defect. Doctors told her to institutionalize the baby because he wasn’t going to do anything and would die soon anyway. She was determined to take care of the baby herself and to prove them wrong.

The baby did achieve some development and surprised the doctors. Then, one winter morning, she was driving her kids to somewhere, and another car slipped and hit her car. The other car hit right to the side where that baby was seated, and he died instantly. Magically, she and her other (normal) kids didn’t get hurt at all.

After grieving, she realized that the baby caused the accident himself to leave this world. It was time for him to go — he appreciated his mother’s love and care, but he also knew he wasn’t going to be much more than he already was, and wanted to leave so that he could have another fresh start at some point of time later. The mother was sad, but she came to accept this.

I hope this article offer some help and release for those who suffer from the loss of their children and those who are perplexed with the issue of children’s deaths. If you know such person, please email them the link to this article.

I usually play the role of an educator (haha) here at Yes to Me, but today, I want to switch roles.  I have some serious questions about life, this world, and myself and I’m hoping my wise readers can help me.  (Photo by Sailing)

1. Why are people afraid of death?

There seems to be a consensus that the longer a person lives, the better.  I hear people say something like, “If I’m really lucky, I’d live to 100 . . .”  And when someone dies young, whether that is 80 years old or 60 years old or 40 years old or as a minor, that is considered bad and shameful.  Or in the case of children’s death, they blame God or the doctors or something.

Like (this is just one example of many, nothing personal here), Tim Brownson commented in Zen Habits regarding the Law of Attraction, “. . .my introduction to manifesting was The 28 Laws of Attraction by Thomas Leonard that originally came out (I think) about 6 or 7 years ago. Thomas Leonard then died at the age of 48, so his manifesting ability as an expert seems questionable at best ”

But then, most older people I see don’t seem to be particularly happy. Why?  If living long life is the ultimate goal of life (or at least one of them) and everyone wants it, they are the winners, right?

I don’t get it.  I don’t mind leaving here on Earth this afternoon (except that I have several weeks worth of waiting list for my service – hope someone would refund them after I’m gone).  Not that I want to die.  Well, honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of all the mess in the world, but I still enjoy my life and I don’t mind continuing to live and do some service work in the meantime.  But I don’t think it’s a bad thing to die.  Just spare me with excessive pain and drama.  (So don’t send me paper bomb, okay?)

But maybe I’m missing something?  Can someone give me a few reasons why living long is the ultimate goal?

2. Why do people want more money than they can spend?

I do understand that we live in a monetary system and money comes handy to get the products and services I want.  That is why I have my business and charge a heck of money ^_^  (I raised my rate three times in less than a year.)  But I don’t understand wanting more money than I need.

Let’s just say I make a comfortable living with 100K a year.  And let’s also say I achieve this goal.  (Not quite there yet, and I probably don’t need this much, but hey, it’s fun to think.  And I’m not good with numbers so I don’t want to work out the real numbers.)  There are three choices I can make at this point:

1. Keep working hard and make even more money
2. Work less, enjoy life more
3. Keep working hard but in a different way, including some work that may not produce income

I’d choose either 2 or 3.  But many people seem to choose 1.  Why?

For rainy days?  Again, I do understand the benefit of having some buffers.  Life is full of ups and downs.  But really, isn’t it a bit obsessive to think the more the better?  Or are there other reasons I have not noticed?

3. Why are some people so passionately against same sex marriage and other stuffs they are not involved?

I do understand that if you are homosexual and want to get married, you are passionate about legalizing same sex marriage.  It’s your issue. I don’t necessarily think legal marriage is particularly a wonderful institution, but if you want it, you want it, and that is fine.

But if you are heterosexual, what do you care about same sex marriage?  It has nothing to do with you.  I’m straight, and I simply don’t have much to say about homosexualism.  For me, they are just people like me or anyone else.

However, I do have something to say about love and marriage in general regardless of the participants’ gender.

And that is: love is good.  If you are gay and really hate being gay, that may be an issue, like a sugar addict hating sugar cravings.  But as long as you are happy with yourself, I don’t think any form of love is “wrong”.  (Oooops, I forgot the possibilities of extremes like incest.  There are people who want to argue using the fake logic of extremes.)

Some argue same sex marriage weakens marriage.  BS.  Marriage has been weakened by people getting married for wrong reasons like for money, security, or validation, and also weakened by married people who are cheating.  Two  adults getting married for mutual love and care cannot damage the institution of marriage whatever their gender may be.

I don’t understand the whole homophobia stuff, either.  Why is it bad for a man to sxxx another man’s penis while it is fine for a woman to do the same?  And why do you care about what other people do in their privacy?  It’s not like they are dumping lead paint off the drain, contaminating our Earth.

4. What is my image or brand?

The dignified, outspoken, and secretly sensitive James Chartland (the last one is tricky.  Apparently sensitive is not the image he likes to cast on himself, so he works hard to impress his readers with his manliness.  But I bet he is sensitive)  wrote an interesting post about branding.  In that article, he points out how Frank Kern utilizes the laid-back, every man image as his brand to sell his expensive info product.

I’m intrigued.  While I think I know myself pretty well, I also know it is extremely hard to know oneself.  So will you please help me?  Describe Akemi as you know her with three (or more) words, like I did for James and write them in the comment.  You can be honest ^_^

Thank you and a big smile!

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives explores the fascinating world where our souls go in between physical incarnations.  Dr. Michael Newton is one of the authorities in the past life regression hypnotherapy and he compiled this book from multiple cases of his clients.  Unlike Dr. Brain Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters, which was written about one specific client, this book attempts to describe the spiritual world common to all of us.

Fear of death cripples many people.  Understanding that our souls live beyond the physical body’s death can help you overcome this fear and live more fully. So I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is afraid of death or people who may have lost their loved ones recently.

The sou’s life between lives

The book describes the process of in-between life in the spiritual world in the following chapters:

1. Death and Departure
2. Gateway to the Spirit World
3. Homecoming
4. Orientation
5. Transition
6. Placement
7. Life Selection
8. Choosing a New Body
9. Preparation and Embarkation
10. Rebirth

(the above numbers don’t relate to the book’s chapter numbers because there are several other chapters that discuss related issues.)

As Akashic Record Reading specialist, I have working knowledge about this process, but it was so interesting to hear the detailed accounts of each process.

The first part of going into the spirit world is often discussed in the near-death or out-of-body experiences as well.  As soon as the soul is released from the body, there is no pain nor fear any more.  The soul may feel a bit disoriented because of the sudden big change, but very soon it accepts what has happened and actually is delighted to come back to its real home world.

What Michael Newton calls Orientation is more about review of the life that just ended.  We review if we have learned the life lessons we ourselves planned to learn in that life.  There are special function Spirits who help us do this.  My understanding is this is not about judgment – we review our progress against our own plan.

It’s also interesting that souls belong to a small cluster group.  The members of this group are tightly knit together and help each other learn – kind of peer support group.

And isn’t it amazing that, although the spirit world is a wonderful place to be, souls eventually decide to take the challenge of incarnation again!  This physical world is a beautiful world with all its problems.

Soul’s age and development level

These two critical concepts can be quite confusing so I want to share my understanding.  In Journey of Souls, Michael Newton makes references to what I believe to be the accurate account, but sometimes the points are unclear or seemingly inconsistent.

In my practice, I make clear distinction between the soul’s age and its development level.  In my definition, the soul’s age is the number of lifetimes the soul has incarnated in the physical body on Earth.  Some of my clients are old souls who have incarnated more than a hundred times, and some are relatively new souls who has had only a few lifetimes on Earth.

The soul’s development level is another story. A new soul who has had only a few physical lifetimes may be a very advanced soul while an older soul may be behind in the development level.

The reason is one, souls don’t start at the same development level, and two, souls develop at varying pace.

Just like any school at Earth.  Even in kindergarten, each kids start at different level with different personalities and learning styles.  Treating them as if they are all at the same level is a fake equalitarian approach.

Large part of the reason why some souls start at higher level of development right from the start is because they are star travelers (sometimes called starseeds).  They had lives elsewhere.  I only count physical lifetimes on this Earth.  (Michael Newton discuss about souls coming from other worlds in the chapter about advanced souls.)

And of course, we develop at different speeds.  Otherwise, what is the point of making effort for personal and spiritual growth?  If you develop at the same pace with the couch potato who just pass their time watching TV and drinking beer, why would you work on your development and read this blog?

The time between each incarnation can differ greatly, too, among souls, which further complicates the issue of soul “age”.  Some souls come back within a few years, some take several hundred years.  Sometime, I get clients whose last lifetime was millennium ago  — it’s like the soul didn’t intend to incarnate again but changed its mind for some reason.  So this is a very old soul in terms of historical time span, but with only a few physical incarnations, and it may be a very advanced soul.

My simple question about the methodology of this book

I just couldn’t help wondering one thing as I read Journey Of Souls.  So Michael Newton gathered this amazing information about life between lives by conducting hypnotherapy to many people.  He keeps saying like, “My case reports . . .” “Many clients support this view of . . .”  Nice and objective approach, I guess.

But.  If he is so enthusiastic about uncovering the mystery of in-between life of souls, why doesn’t he go there himself?  He can certainly do this by having his trusted assistant therapist work on him.  Doesn’t he want to go see it himself?  Isn’t that a quick way to clarify some of the challenging questions?  Is there a reason he doesn’t want to do this?  Or did he do it but doesn’t want to disclose it?

When I read Dr Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters, I felt his sincere compassion.  This book by Dr Michael Newton felt very different to me.

Do you have questions about life between lives?  Please share in the comments.