[ Setting: A grassy embankment under a clear starry night. ]
KELLY: I feel like I did when I laid out under the stars with my father and we talked; the vastness of the universe, the Milky Way, so small in such a big place.
ALLEGENTIA: But not insignificant; you are loved individually and personally. Not only by the people and angels who know you, but by God himself. Humans do not understand or often consciously feel the continuous flood of love at their disposal. Nothing could exist without his consistent and infinite upholding and the constant outpouring of his nurturing love.
KELLY: I remember your confirming the existence of God in your introduction, but of course, an angel would. We were not very religious in my family but I did know some kids in school who went to church. I guess now I will pay more attention to God.
ALLEGENTIA: It is true: God does exist. Some believe in the idea of God but do not feel his presence. Nonetheless, common belief can lead to true faith. One can believe in anything true or false but real faith is always true. It can, therefore, shortcut the road to knowing God. Even a very miniscule dose of genuine faith works to show the truth. Survival of physical death definitely points to a greater reality. It is not in and of itself proof of God’s being real, but it shocks people into thinking in a larger frame. The fact of God (and, of course, his nature and attributes) will become more and more obvious as you grow and learn.
KELLY: Well, the fact you are taking me to heaven is good enough for me. I was never really taught anything about heaven; what is it like?
ALLEGENTIA: You may be thinking, as most do, that heaven is a single place, but heaven is a state of mind, a state of soul, and ultimately a state of love. If you have an idea of heaven as someplace better, you are correct. You have already had a taste of heaven in your earth life. It is typical to project the heaven above as simply an extension of earthly delights. I can tell you those delights do exist (even more than you can imagine), but the greatest of these, and you already know something of this too, is loving and being loved.
We are going to an exquisite planet and you will see many things you have never seen before. The architecture, from thousands of cultures and hundreds of planets, is rich and varied. The gardens have been tended with loving care for millions of years. The beauty of each individual soul shines through the people you will meet. And, of course, there are lots and lot of magnificent and helpful angels.
KELLY: Sounds great! Will it take very long to get accustomed to all this newness?
ALLEGENTIA: There will be much confusion at first but this is because you, and every other person just arriving, has made a monumental transition. Your integration will be stimulating and yet sometimes jarring. Learn one thing quickly: when to back off. There are so many wonderful things to see, people to meet, and ideas to explore you will be overwhelmed. Learn when to take a break from the input. Absorb what you can efficiently, then go off and get some rest.
KELLY: That sounds like good advice but I think I will be too eager to get on to the next thing to sleep very much.
ALLEGENTIA: In heaven rest is not just sleep. There is need for sleep as you knew it, and this will be the case for quite awhile, but you will need less and less as you master the other forms of rest. The best type of rest is worship, but there is also meditation, reflection, communing with beauty, being with friends sharing your lives and adventures, humor, and of course, play and creativity.
KELLY: Oh, okay, you mean take things in and then get some perspective.
ALLEGENTIA: That’s right. One thing to contemplate when you are overwhelmed is the absolute generosity of God. The sheer volume of new things you will encounter in the first one hundred years will be far more than anyone could have foreseen on Earth. By then you will have a fairly good idea of what is in store for the next ten thousand years. And after the ten thousand are achieved, you will be able to look with some accuracy and with joyful anticipation toward the subsequent one hundred thousand. You will find the scope of reality continually expands. God is infinite and he is infinitely generous in sharing himself with us.
KELLY: You make it sound exciting not overwhelming. I grew up in the mountains and I loved the adventure of hiking into the wilderness. I was just on one of those trips with some friends of mine. We had reached this high meadow and were camping but I was restless and wanted to do some climbing. My friends knew I was the best climber of us all so they did not worry too much about me. I suppose they have found my body by now. I feel bad about that.
The razor attention of the climb was on me as I ascended but I guess I am dead proof (ha-ha, just the opposite of living proof) confidence can slip over to the foolish side. I saw the handhold clearly but now I know it was just too iffy and I did not take care enough with my protection. I have had short falls before but this time I was up there pretty high. It was instant panic and then instant calm when I knew I was probably a goner. It was actually a nice little flight. When I hit, the sensation was being knocked out of my body kind of like having the wind knocked out only a thousand times more intense. I looked up to an impossibly clear brightness, and I just kept going up. Then all of a sudden you were talking to us.
I guess this is the first of many times I will tell that story.
ALLEGENTIA: It’s a good one. We angels do not die so we can only know secondhand what it is like. We do make some transitions as we make progress from one stage of accomplishment to the next but ours, although gratifying, are not abrupt.
You should not let this accident reduce your confidence. Simply add some prudence to the mix. It will serve you well and it will not dampen your adventuresome streak.
KELLY: That sound like something my friend Jerry would say. After a fall we all encouraged each other to get back up on the rock as soon as possible. My Mom was always telling me to be careful. I hope she is not too disappointed in me. But I still think the risk was worth the reward. Maybe I can take her climbing when she gets up there; that would be cool. I can only imagine the walls I can tackle on this new planet.
ALLEGENTIA: Surprisingly enough, you will not see many cliffs and none as spectacular as the ones on Earth. These transition spheres were designed and built by The Master Architects rather than formed through the sometimes violent metamorphosis of normal planet building, but climbing is available. Exploration and boundary-pushing are encouraged more so than caution and timidity. All things in balance are advantageous to your overall progress.
KELLY: Okay, I’ll try to look before I ‘leap’ next time. (Ha! another falling joke.) Even if I cannot climb big walls, I’m glad to hear there are other daring exploits to be had. Maybe I should learn to fly.
ALLEGENTIA: Your last “flying” lesson did not go so well but we can get you a special angelic air transfer specialist to give you a few pointers. These planets are full of exciting things to do with the company of plenty of unique people. All manner of things work together for your continued growth.
After the Progress Worlds there are millions of planets but you will not go to all of them. There are as many different journeys as there are people. Your goal will always be the same ─ to find God, to discover and then acquire his nature and attributes to the extent you are able at the time. Your capacity for growth will increase as your qualities increase in depth and breadth. The better you are the better you can become. Then, as a true spirit, you will have literally learned self-locomotion.
Eventually you will leave all time and space behind because you will have attained the skill to transcend even those. When you finally reach the Center of Paradise, and are face to face with the most magnificent Being in the universe, you will see just how little of him you have come to know. There is always more.
KELLY: I did not think it was so extensive. How many inhabited worlds are there?
ALLEGENTIA: As far as the number of worlds like Earth, there are close to 750 billion inhabited worlds in the Milky Way. And there are six other Milky Way-sized super-universes with approximately six trillion more. Your Earth is a very young planet compared to many of these others. Most of the rest of the billions of other galaxies visible with your new observational devices are not yet inhabited.
KELLY: I cannot think in numbers that big. Did beings from any of these other planets visit Earth? Did we actually have ET’s?
ALLEGENTIA: I suppose you could say Jesus and Adam and Eve were extraterrestrials. And there have always been angels on Earth. And there is one stage of your training which will take you to many evolving worlds, but you will not take local human form while there, nor will you have any psychic contact with the inhabitants, you will just be an observer. By the time you are ready for this phase of your education you will be more spiritual than physical and thus not visible with normal human eyes.
Some planetary systems have more than one inhabited world and the neighboring residents eventually develop the means to travel to and fro. But there are no living mortals from far off earth-like planets who are capable of extended interstellar space flight. The only way for human populations to get around in space, even if carried by angels, is at sub-light speeds because physical matter transmutes to energy at the higher speeds required to cover such great distances within a reasonable time.
Visitation from humans outside one’s own solar system is simply not possible since the time involved would take up more than the lifespan of an individual. Most planets are not motivated to do so anyway since they are connected to the typical interplanetary lines of communication. Your world has been in isolation from these “voices from heaven” since the time of the Lucifer rebellion. This is one reason the humans from Earth are so unique.
KELLY: Then why so many sightings?
ALLEGENTIA: There were several sources. When you looked up at the stars you imagined the possibility of others being out there. This is universal, mainly because it is true. Hoaxes would not work if the desire was not there in the first place. There have been physical manifestations of angels on certain occasions and some people can sense the presence of angels and other terrestrial beings who are not widely known to exist.
KELLY: What do you mean “other terrestrial beings who are not widely known to exist?”
ALLEGENTIA: There are benign beings on your planet who live in the range of energy between human and angelic. This fact puts them outside the scope of human vision. They have various ways of getting around but they do not simply think of being in a different location and there they are. They must use physical contrivances to get from one place to another quickly. These machines have occasionally been seen and have been described over the ages as everything from the chariots of the gods to unidentified flying objects. Recently sightings have been allowed to be viewed in preparation for the day when the celestial communication lines are reopened and we make our presence known to everyone outright.
KELLY: We used to tell tales around the campfires but I always held, let’s call it, a healthy suspicion of anything beyond the norm.
ALLEGENTIA: I know the skeptic in you rebels at an explanation which smacks of magical beings, and rightly so. There have been so many centuries of false and fantastic speculation at everything beyond the immediately obvious. It has been a long road to train the human mind to be courageous in seeking the truth above all else without resorting to magic and superstition.
Nonetheless, there are things which are still beyond current human knowledge and there always will be. I am an angel and yet here you are speaking with me. Just a few weeks ago if I had come to you, you would have thought your mind was playing tricks on you. Yet now you see I am real.
The reasonable person can, and should, believe more than just those things sufficiently explained, including those plausible things just out of reach. It is important to maintain a sense of wonder, and it is very important to reach beyond the current scope of scientific information and intellectual knowledge without being gullible.
KELLY: Earth has certainly kept some big secrets. It sounds like I have lots to look forward to. Thanks for the info and the advice.