Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (6 page)

No, not exactly.
But I think you may be referring to someone who is, as we might put it, at death’s door. Usually in cases like that, I’m not hearing from that person but from other spirits that have already crossed. They may be telling me that this person will be joining them soon, that they are getting ready to call him. That person might even be seeing the spirits of his family who are waiting to receive him. Like someone in a coma, he may be lingering, not sure about going, maybe having some fears. But it’s his time. In any case, I’m not talking
with
that person; I’m hearing
about
that person.

I believe they
can decline. But I doubt that this could continue on and on. So far, we have not earned eternal life in the flesh (and I’m not sure that would be such a prize to win, anyway, even though I know some see that as a goal). I think there would have to be a good reason for someone to be able to stay once they’ve been called. From everything I’ve heard, I believe that when we are called, there is nothing we’d like more than to go. It’s true that we might linger if we think someone here will be hurt by our leaving, but almost always we want to go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard in a reading that hearing a loved one say to them “It’s okay to go” made all the difference. They are so grateful for that.

I can’t give
a definitive answer here, like a formula, but it has to do with those we’ve loved and lost, as well as the spirit Masters (kind of like caseworkers) who have been involved with our lives while we are here. It will always be a group of souls bringing us back home. If, for example, someone has been told in a reading that her husband will be coming to get her when it’s her time, that soul will be there, but he won’t be alone. He’ll be with a host of others. We may think that we’ll “only have eyes” for that one individual soul when we cross, but what happens is that as soon as we enter the Light and that knowing comes over us, we will recognize all the other souls who are with that one. We’ll recognize even souls that we didn’t know, this time, on earth, but knew before in other lives.

They know everything.
They are like God. When they cross over they become omniscient, all knowing—they know all of our thoughts and impulses. Even things they didn’t understand before, they now see clearly. It is revealed to them why things happened exactly the way they did.

Once we cross we completely understand, for example, why our mates behaved the way they did, what their mission was, how it related to ours, everything behind anything that didn’t make sense to us before. Any skeletons in the family closet that might have been hidden from us, we will know about. I recall a reading I was doing for a woman and her son came through, I don’t recall if I was told the circumstances, but he crossed before his mother. He told his mother that he knew that the person he’d always known here as his uncle was really his father. But he wasn’t accusing his mom. He told her he understood why she couldn’t say anything about it, why she’d had to keep this hidden, what it would have done to their family if anyone had known it.

They don’t judge
at all—we are the ones who make judgments, even though it isn’t our place to do so. On the Other Side, there is no room for anything other than complete love, forgiveness, and joy. Judgment does not have a place there at all.

Once we cross
over there are not different religions. You don’t get to the Other Side and see eighteen desks and a dispatcher directing you: “Muslims to the left, Jews to the right, Catholics down the hall, second door to the right.” We are all the same when we get to the Other Side. We are all one. There’s not a dozen or two dozen different heavens we go to. It’s all the same place. What do you think? If I’m doing a reading for Mr. Goldberg I get an operator? “Just a minute, Miss, while I connect you with the Jewish heaven.” No. It’s the same place for you, for me, for people of every color, creed, or religion.

God created these religions—and really,
all
our differences—because he wanted to show us to love one another
despite
our differences. And that’s not how it worked out, so far. I’m sure God is very sad about that. There’s an ad I really like on TV. I think it’s for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons. The scene is inside a church and first you see this gay couple sitting in the pew together, and down at the bottom of the screen is a button and a big hand comes in and pushes the button and the couple goes flying out of the church. Then you see an old homeless woman come in and sit down and again the hand comes in and hits the button and she goes flying out of the church. Then you see a biracial couple come in with a cute little baby and here comes the hand again, hitting the ejector button, and the whole family goes flying. And then there’s the message: God does not reject anybody.
That
is the real truth. God does not reject
anybody
. I like this ad because it makes me feel like maybe the world is finally waking up, beginning to change, becoming more accepting. Do I care if there’s someone of every race, class, and sexual orientation at my barbecue? Does that hurt me? The only one who would be bothered by that is someone in a white hood and sheet, and they are definitely
not
welcome at chez Bertoldi!

No. We don’t
worship God. But we both love God and are God. When we are here we are limited, we are only a piece of God. But over there, we are united as one unlimited “body of God,” for lack of a better way to put it.

No. Murderers are
not invited to the party. Evil does not go into the Light. Hitler, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and the like are not going to be there, which I am happy about since I don’t think I ever want to be at the same party with Hitler. I can carry on a conversation with most people, but I’d probably have a bit of a problem with someone like that.

Each of us has a reckoning at the end of our lives and will have to answer for all our actions, and they will, too, but not in the same place. Someone like O.J. Simpson, who thinks he got away with murder, will have another reckoning. I looked at the facts of that case as a person, and I listened to the dead as a medium, and I believe that he is guilty, and though he may think he got away with his crime, I assure you he did not. From all I know or have heard it is my belief that what we think of as hell is not a hot, fiery place where the evil burn forever. It’s completely without light of any kind, very cold and very dark. Completely without love. To be honest, I don’t have a complete understanding of this realm because I don’t deal in that.

Yes, I really
do. What we call the devil, or an evil spirit, really does exist. Just as there is positive, there is also negative—this is a world of duality and you can’t have one without the other. But I also believe that the good is more powerful than the evil. If you think about it, you can bring one small candle into a dark room and it’s not dark anymore. But darkness can’t make a candle not light. The light can eliminate the dark, but the dark can’t eliminate the light.

On the Other
Side They do find peace. They
are
peace. They
are
love. There may be some initial anger over having their lives cut short, not getting to do what they incarnated to do. But once They are given understanding, that feeling passes away very quickly. Anger and heartbreak are not at all the norm on the Other Side. We have to bear in mind also that maybe They did know that was part of the plan for them, part of what They agreed to before coming. We can’t know that. I have done readings, for example, where someone who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center has come through, and he or she expressed no anger at all. They knew they had made a sacrifice and there would be change of some kind because of that.

When we think of anger and heartbreak, we’re thinking in terms of the flesh. We might think, on this side, Man, that really sucks to be killed. We see it as the loss of life, the loss of the body, the loss of what we see as volition. We might compare being killed to being imprisoned for life, stuck in a cell with no hope of getting out, and seeing our whole life expire day by day without our being able to make anything of it. But in fact, even if it was not what they thought they wanted, in death they are liberated. In spirit, they are unlimited. They haven’t lost us; they’re still with us. So it’s an entirely different perspective.

Oh, definitely he
is immediately whisked from his body and gathered up by a group of souls and taken to a place of intense, perfect love. The souls immediately help that person (now also a soul) to make the adjustment. There is no enduring suffering, it is over instantly, and immediately, once he is in the Light; that soul is given a remembering of what that experience was for, why he agreed to it. But I cannot stress enough that under these kinds of circumstances, the soul does immediately leave the body and is not suffering. On this side, it’s very difficult to grasp the idea of not being in the body. But pain belongs to the physical, and that soul is no longer physical, so there is no pain.

Once she is
there, justice is in the hands of God. It is not like here where we are so hell-bent on revenge, punishment, and retribution. Nobody “gets away with it” on the Other Side, but justice is not meted out in courts and prisons. It’s karmic; God decides what is correct, and meanwhile, among souls, including someone whose physical life has been ended in such a way, there is only forgiveness. Hard to believe, maybe, but true.

This is a
very difficult subject and I don’t want to give an overly simple or wrong answer, but there is a lot about this that I don’t understand. What I have been told, and virtually anyone knows this at a gut level to be true, is that there is nothing worse than taking a human life. That said, I do believe there is a difference between someone who willfully murders, and someone whose country sends him to war, and someone who accidentally kills another person, and someone who is in so much torment on this side that he ends his own life. What I believe is that on the Other Side there are different levels for these differences. Over there, it’s not about judgment, it’s about justice and forgiveness and healing. Spirit Masters will try to help the individual forgive and heal himself. It is the spirit—the one who killed himself—who must be able to forgive himself. This isn’t easy because on the deepest possible soul level he knows he has done something wrong. Sometimes there will be a suicide where it’s assumed that the person didn’t really intend to take it that far, that it’s a cry for help. In this case, an apparent attempt that unfortunately succeeded might be deemed “accidental” by those who loved that person. A drug overdose and some kinds of single-vehicle accidents might be called “accidental.” But from what I understand, I do believe that even in those cases there was an element of intention; on some level the person really wanted to go, and so it’s not entirely accidental. That soul will need to contend with her feelings about what she has done. She has lost the opportunity to fulfill that life’s karma, and in so doing has created more karma for herself, created a situation where she will need to work to balance things in another lifetime. It’s like in
On the Waterfront
when Marlon Brando throws the fight. Later he’s sick about it. He says, “I coulda been a contender.” If we throw the fight we reap regret. Those who commit suicide will have forgiveness from God, but they will have to struggle to forgive themselves.