Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (21 page)

Well, first, of
course, we all are going to die. When and how is part of our destiny, and I do believe that there are reasons for things that we might not understand. I do know that this question, especially when it concerns a younger person, creates such heartache on this side. People want to know
why,
which is a question to be answered on the Other Side. I definitely have many of my own “why” questions that I’m sure I will be asking all my life, even though I know I won’t get the answers until I cross home. Only God knows “why.”

Yes, I do
believe we get to the point when we aren’t supposed to come back anymore. I don’t know how long it takes—probably longer for some than for others—and I don’t know what it takes. There are highly evolved Masters that help spirits on the lower levels of growth, this I am very sure of. But I really wish I had more understanding of this because it’s something that I’m intrigued by myself.

Absolutely.

For example, when John and I got together, immediately I knew there would be problems. I’d always been surrounded by a lot of caring and love from my family. But with John and his family I was surrounded by negative energy. I hated it, but They kept saying John was in my life to teach me something, They kept telling me to be patient. I used to have zero patience. No tolerance. I’d get angry easily if someone didn’t understand me—I just had no experience with it from the way I was raised. On the other hand, John had experienced negativity all his life and so he was more like “just don’t make waves.” This made me furious because I felt like his family was treating me very badly and he wasn’t standing up for me. We were really different in our approaches, to put it mildly. It’s hard to say that this kind of experience really is good for someone, but for me, it’s almost like I had to experience negativity to understand it. And I needed to learn to let others have the freedom of their own thoughts. You can’t please everyone, not everyone is going to “get” you or like you. You have to allow other people to have the freedom of their own thoughts and opinions. So my relationship with John really taught me patience.

I was getting help, during all of this, and sometimes from an unusual place. I never met John’s father; he was already dead when we got together. Sometimes when John and I were arguing we’d go to bed completely angry with each other and he’d be as far on his side of the bed as he could get, and I’d be as far on my side as I could get, like there was a wall down the middle of the mattress. Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night with someone pushing on my shoulder—John’s father, Leo—saying, “Hey. He doesn’t understand. But you know better than this.” Then I’d go over to John and put my arms around him and he’d just melt, and we’d wake up in the morning with a new day and a new start.

We all are
learning, over many lifetimes, by our own choices and mistakes. Karma is like a balancing out of the positive and the negative, but underlying it is purpose. Sometimes things that seem unfair to us, or not what we think we want, may be our karma balancing itself. On the other hand, it may be more related to some important reason for us being here, now, at this time and place.

In my own life, John is the one person I love very much and so far have spent nearly twenty-five years with. But I was not able to have children with him. There was a trade-off: no kids, but a great marriage to a great man, and for this I’m completely grateful. That’s a kind of balance even if maybe I’d have wanted to find a different way to achieve that balance. But in terms of my purpose, the fact that I don’t have children allows me to do the work I do. If I’d had kids, I would not have had the time, and I don’t believe I’d have taken the chance. I wouldn’t have wanted to expose them to any potential fallout from my being perceived as “weird” or worse. Going public would have been too difficult, and frankly, I don’t believe I would have done so. Because I do believe that I was meant to do this work, that would have been a problem, so I can look at that and say, yes, there is meaning to the outlines of my life.

Although some things seem pretty obvious to the lay person, let alone a therapist, I can’t possibly tell anyone else what their lessons are. I’m not God so I’m only guessing. God is the only one who knows for sure. But I do think that if we are honest enough in looking at all the details that make up our lives, we can see a pattern and a purpose. And even if we don’t quite “get it” on this side, when we cross over, we definitely will be given the reasons for everything we don’t understand here.

Yes, to a
great degree it does. But it’s really a combination of things. We come here, born to certain parents with a certain set of circumstances, including our personalities, our looks, our level of awareness, and so forth. We’re here to be challenged by being in the flesh, making decisions, living—gracefully or not—with the consequences of our decisions. Maybe we have chosen to be born into money, or maybe our challenge is to see if we can become rich on our own after being born into poverty. Maybe we have money, but make bad decisions and lose it. Maybe we earn money, or are born with it, but then for some reason can’t enjoy it. Many a person is born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but could have an unattractive appearance or personality and can resent her wealth because she thinks it’s the only thing about her that others care about, or she could use it to punish people she thinks don’t like her.

Sometimes I see a person who looks like she has it all—good looks, a ton of money, a beautiful relationship, healthy kids. All of it, gifts from God. She is very fortunate. But I have to assume, when I see this, that such a person has karmically earned this by making good decisions and treating others well. If she makes poor choices, even someone who has been so blessed could lose it all. For her to have received such gifts, there was a reason; how she handles her good fortune will result in something else.

So much struggle
comes with the flesh, which the dead do not have to experience on the Other Side. That sounds wonderful, I know. But it is not ideal never to struggle. We learn through struggle. It is nearly impossible for Them to continue to learn and grow without this struggle. So They will choose to come back to evolve and to gain more insights. This is how we achieve a higher soul growth.

Soul growth is
comparable to the education system we have on this side. Just as we continue to go to school to earn higher degrees, we continue to come back to the flesh so that we can “graduate” from one level to the next.

Here in the
physical world, nobody’s perfect. We don’t have the same personalities and we don’t have the same way of looking at things. That’s also true on the Other Side, but what they have that we lack is the perspective that we are all here to love one another, that we are all part of God and as such there is no one more valuable than anybody else. What they know over there is that even if one person is “right” about something, that doesn’t make the other person evil; they still need to be accepted. Here we always want to be right or get even or maybe shun people whose behavior we don’t like. Over there, we understand that all is forgiven and it’s not up to us to judge or punish.

I’m not sure
if it’s required, but I do know that many times when I’m doing a reading the spirit who comes through will want to apologize for something he said or did while in the flesh. There may have been a family dispute and the soul wants those who remain here to forgive him for his part in it, and if it’s still going on, to put it aside. For example, I can tell you that John’s father, Leo, was, while living, an alcoholic, and he did and said many, many hurtful things to John and his family. I know, because Leo has told me, that he wants to make this up to John. I think when John and I were having marital problems and Leo was reminding me that I knew better than to treat John badly, it was his way of trying to do something positive for the son he had hurt. As for me, I told you right from the beginning that I don’t get along with my mother-in-law. I know it’s not what God wants, and I do try. But being human, I haven’t quite mastered that one yet. Will I have to peel potatoes on the Other Side? I doubt that anyone will force me, but I am aware that once I leave my body and my pride behind, I may be disappointed in myself that I wasn’t able to raise my game in this area.

Well, Jesus does
say that if someone hurts us, we are to offer them our other cheek. I’m not so sure I’m with Jesus on that one! I’m just kidding, but I do think this is misinterpreted sometimes. I think what Jesus meant is that we are to forgive, which for us humans is sometimes easier said than done. I do know that we are not obliged to let someone hurt us, especially not over and over again. None of us comes here to experience being a doormat to be walked over and stepped on. Even if we think we have karma with someone, maybe we believe we might have done something hurtful to them in a past life, the way of balancing that is not for them to hurt
us
this time around, but for us to do something good for them this time around. If someone is hurting us, we need to know that this person is creating karma for himself that will eventually need to be balanced. We need to extract ourselves from that situation. It’s
their
lesson.

Say there’s a husband who loves his wife. His friend tells him that he’s seen her at a motel with someone else. He doesn’t believe his friend. But then he finds his wife in bed with someone in their own home. Does he have to stay with her? Maybe they have kids—should he feel guilty for breaking up the family? Of course, he has to make appropriate arrangements with the children. He may even decide he can forgive her and keep the family together—these are all his choices, but it’s her karmic lesson. On a lesser scale, if someone just treats you poorly, you don’t need to spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out whether there is some karmic reason behind it. Most of the time, nothing even needs to be said. Just don’t let them back into your positive space, don’t give them any more of your energy.

Yes. Taking up
my last example, the man who found his wife in bed with someone else, he’ll have to interact with her again in another lifetime, but it won’t be the same thing. Maybe next time they’ll be coworkers and she’ll have an opportunity to help him, make his life better, make him happy, if only for a day. She’ll have a chance to repair the damage. He doesn’t owe her anything. When something like that happens, we may try to figure out what the lesson was—but that’s just because we’re human and we love puzzles. We can’t really know.

No, certainly not.
On this side people may have total disregard for the damage they do. They don’t understand the lifelong ramifications it can have in the life of those they hurt, or if they do, they don’t care. They also, however, don’t realize that on the Other Side they will have to answer for it. They will be made to feel the entire experience and the domino effect of all they did, all they caused by their actions, every bit of pain as the other person experienced it. Not pleasant, I’m sure. I can’t tell you how often a spirit like this will come through in a reading, apologizing profusely to the person she hurt on this side. It’s interesting that their energy is very different from the regular spirit with regular not-so-good deeds in this life. Whereas most spirits appear to me as bright clear light, someone who is guilty of crimes or cruelty will be of an energy that is darker and grayish. Maybe the person he hurt is in therapy the whole rest of her life, maybe that person can never trust anyone or can never have a normal loving relationship, she’s been hurt so bad. Over there he wants to atone. He will apologize profusely to the person’s very core because he knows he has done damage that deep.