What I have learned about life after death so far…Part 2b

The previous post and the discussion about heaven allowing everyone in leads to the question I get all the time if there is a God and heaven, then is there a hell?

This is where things might get a little hard to swallow for some. God forgives everyone all their transgressions. Even serial killers. Even pedophiles. Everyone is forgiven. But, and there is a big BUT, there is work to do on the other side if you have treated people wrongly. All is forgiven, but not forgotten. What does this mean exactly?

When souls die that have behaved poorly in this life, I like to call them developing souls, they are taken to a holding room. In fact, souls have shown me that these developing souls get a glimpse of heaven in all its glory. But they don’t get to stay in that glorious area of paradise. They are pulled aside into this waiting room and told that they have work to do before they can participate in heaven without restriction.

This waiting room is all white. Developing souls are placed in front of a wall that becomes a screen. On this screen, their transgressions are played back. When these images and moments are played back, the soul experiences these moments, not how they felt them in life, but how the person they harmed experienced them. This is to help the offending soul understand and have more awareness of what their actions caused. These images and experiences can include decisions that may have harmed themselves as well. For some, that may seem like hell, but this room is a part of heaven. These images will be replayed and experienced over and over again to these developing souls until they understand and feel remorse and empathy for the pain they caused here on earth. Developing souls continue to see and feel the harm they caused here on earth until it literally soaks in and becomes empathy and compassion.

These developing souls have to atone for their poor choices and bad behavior. Can God be disappointed in our decisions? Yes. Can God be angry with us for harming other people and souls? Yes. But God truly is like a parent in a healthy parent-child relationship. God sets boundaries and rules for our benefit and hopes that we follow them. He tries to teach us and steer us toward his way of loving your neighbor as thyself and doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Through all this, He understands that during a human experience, our souls can make mistakes. Often these are teachable moments, learning experiences that will help us when the lesson comes around again in our lives. But if we continue to fail time and again, we will have to answer for that disappointment and the hurt we caused when our bodies die. 

Before these developing souls can move onto the other parts of heaven, they must agree to a rehabilitation program. The way spirits describe this program reminds me of the twelve step program used in Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, this may be where that idea came from. We have soul memory, so a soul must have remembered what happened in heaven and thought if it works in heaven, it can work here, too.

What happens if the developing soul can’t or won’t choose to complete the heavenly twelve-step atonement program? 

There is a period of time that souls can stay in that holding room. If they stay past the point of their welcome and cannot find remorse or empathy to God’s satisfaction, the developing souls will be sent to try again. 

This is where reincarnation can come into play; they might get kicked back to earth in a human body to try again. I will write about reincarnation in another piece with more detail, but this is one area where reincarnation can take place. These developing souls don’t get to choose how or when they come back or what type of life they will be provided; they are sent back to face their twelve-step atonement program here on earth. 

What happens if the developing soul chooses to work through their transgressions? 

First a developing soul, must accept their negative choices and take responsibility for their part in the harm that was caused. Then they must agree to follow the program and God’s will. Then they begin a journey to remove all defects of their poor choices and character.

Once that is complete, the developing souls are given a heavenly mentor, whether it is an angel or spirit guide (I will touch on the difference between these two things later), and they work through the remaining steps of the program. What types of tasks are included in the twelve-step atonement program? For example, developing souls may have to follow and try to help a person on earth who struggles with addiction. Or they may have to help a person repair their destructive behavior. 

How do they do this? All souls with positive intentions in heaven can influence the opportunities presented to us with God’s blessing. They can whisper to our intuition and amplify the best version of our soul so that our best choices are louder than any other option that comes forward in our minds. Still, again we have free will, and we can choose whatever we want. But these souls, on the other side, will work to help us. Developing souls in the atonement programs will guide other positive influences into the life of the human they are helping. Developing souls try to do what they can to help that person here reach their highest potential. 

Another step in the program requires education. These souls may also have to go to classes; yes, there is school in heaven; to learn about how to improve their behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and responses for when they come back to earth. Often this is an unlearning of destructive behavior and the reinforcement of positive behavior. It also is therapeutic and allows the developing souls to heal the hurt that caused them to become so destructive in their life here on earth. As they heal in heaven, that opens pathways for more healing here on earth in their ancestors and loved ones. And then their loved ones heal here on earth, and that healing allows for pathways of more healing in heaven. Healing is a full circle experience.

Another step can often be where a medium or another type of channel comes into place. During the healing process, developing souls must apologize for the harm that they caused here on earth. Therefore, a developing soul will find ways to send apologetic messages to loved ones here on earth. They want to confront their behavior and acknowledge their responsibility in causing pain and harm here on earth. 

These developing souls continue to work and learn, growing spiritually, and emotionally. Then they may choose to come back to earth in a body and work through lessons again in order to complete them to their satisfaction and enter heaven the way developed souls do. They want to achieve healing and forgiveness. They want to be a better version of themselves by the end of the process. 

There is forever a mark or scar, if you will, on a soul that has caused series pain and trauma. These souls don’t wear it like a scarlet letter, but our stories are a part of our soul, and we carry them wherever we go through time and space, heaven and earth. This is so that we remember the lessons and retain the spiritual growth of all our lives. Souls are built to completely understand one another, so your story will always be visible to other souls. This isn’t a terrible thing as heaven is a place with more awareness, compassion, and love then heavy-handed judgment. 

I have come into contact with a few developing souls in my lifetime. These souls can show themselves to us on earth. They do not have free reign or limitless visitations like other souls.

When I was about three, one chased me down the hall of our house in Washington State regularly for the entire time we lived there. It was dark and menacing. It could change shape and look like a wolf with gnashing teeth. But I believed that my bed was bathed in the light of God. I could literally see it, and once there the spirit could no longer affect me. I also prayed for it to leave. It would have to leave once I said those prayers.

Another time, when I was about nineteen, there was a serial killer whose victims reached out to me while I was on vacation hear where they were buried. The man who killed them had died in a motorcycle accident, and he started to visit me. He did not want me to help the girls he murdered. He was dark and brooding. He would visit on and off for roughly a year, trying to bully me and cause fear. If I prayed he could not stay. If I was afraid of him he would grow stronger, but when I lost that fear, when I met him with love and prayer he could no longer visit me.

These souls are often the reason ghosts and hauntings get the scary reputation that they have. These souls make up a tiny percentage, likely 1%, of all spiritual encounters. I think that often these are also considered to be earthbound spirits. People think they are stuck here on earth. They are not. They are interacting with people on earth, trying to wield power. They feed on negative energy, i.e., fear, worry, anger, resentment, etc. If you meet these souls with love, prayer, and without fear, they will leave you alone. You may have to keep asking them to leave, but they will. I also always recommend salt barriers, holy water, and priest visits to help clear unwanted, undeveloped energy from a space. You may have even heard of other techniques, like burning sage, that also works well for this kind of spiritual presence. But these encounters are relatively rare. These undeveloped souls have no real power over what happens here because they have not completed the atonement program. They try to seem brooding and scary because they want us to be afraid. That fear becomes energy that can fuel them. It is often how they also operated in life. But take away the fear and replace it with love and light; they have no way our power to stay.

I told you that it might be hard to swallow that horrible humans get a second chance as a soul, but I think you have to believe in miracles to believe in things like forgiveness and life after death. I think that you have to believe in miracles to keep your faith and hope alive. People all over the world, throughout all times, have built religion out of the faith of a higher being and the miracles that they saw in the world around them. And I think most of us believe in second chances. I think we want people or souls to be held accountable, and they are. But there is also a force in the holy spirit that wants redemption and love to exist in all things.

Faith and religion are important. I think God is more fulfilled if you are faithful, but God is also going to love you regardless of your belief in him or miracles. What really matters is how we treat one another. We are judged for our actions here and held accountable. We are made to atone for them in the next life. It truly matters who we are here. Our character and actions extend past this life.

God is love, hope, and possibility in motion. Heaven is real, and it is all around us. Heavenly souls are supported, loved, protected, and have continued growth. God and our loved ones in spirit want us to know about what comes next. It is something that has been shared throughout the ages and will continue to be shared. Our human experiences can change and alter our heavenly experiences.

In the next post in this series, I will explore reincarnation. 

To be continued…