[ Settings: A flower garden; then Grandma’s farm. ]
ROSE: Oh, this is such a lovely garden. I just loved my rose garden back on Earth. Are there roses in heaven?
ALLEGENTIA: There are and more kinds of plants and flowers than were on Earth; as a matter of fact the entire planet is a garden. Beauty is the most common and appreciated truth in all the universe. I made this image as a composite from those gardens you loved. It is very rare for any image to be a perfect reproduction of an actual place. The visual dioramas I create for my chats with new souls are taken from that individual’s fondest connection to places of peace and comfort lodged in their soul. Thank you for this garden. I appreciate it too.
ROSE: If you can see my garden, what else can you see?
ALLEGENTIA: With everyone I can see the shape of their soul as it is now. Some characteristics are vague since they are just beginning to form. But there are soul expressions so purely spiritual they present themselves as either actual or symbolic images. This is how I knew you loved gardens, they were such a place of serenity and respite for you. When a soul is young and has not formed any connection with a special place, then I meet with them in a quiet setting of my choosing.
ROSE: I do remember some spiritual experiences not connected to any particular places. The love I had for my children comes to mind.
ALLEGENTIA: Some experiences so sublime they come almost intact into the soul’s memory, for example, the place you just envisioned. Watch as I replace this garden with an image appropriate to the love you held for your little ones.
ROSE: Oh! I see. This reminds me of Grandma’s farm. We spent some wonderful times there. How are my children and grandchildren doing? I hated to leave them. There was so much more I wish I could have done in their lives. Will I be able to contact my children from heaven? I do not want them to worry about me.
ALLEGENTIA: I do not have personal information about them. From what I can see about you, I can say they are missing you as much as you are them. This cannot be helped. Loss and grief are part of the human condition. From loss you learn sympathy, empathy, and to always appreciate the important connections you have with those you love – and they with you. Seeing who you are now I can believe you taught them to be independent and to think for themselves.
There is no communication back to the birth planet. Dead humans do not linger; there are no ghosts. When a person dies their body dies and their soul is taken on to heaven. Your family will have to wait to see you when they get there themselves, but until then they will hold you in their hearts just as you do them. After a period of mourning they will move on with their lives and make you proud. And you will see them again in due time, just as your parents will be glad to see you soon.
ROSE: But we are talking now. Can’t you get them a message?
ALLEGENTIA: Yes, we are communicating because I am an angel and I can interact with your soul but only because it has been separated form your physical form. On Earth very few are able to see angels. Yet, there have been rare situations where angels have been made visible for important communications. If you are thinking an angel can give them an auditory message, this too is very rare and permission must be granted for a specific reason. But if you are hoping people who love and miss you might receive an impression of your well-being from their guardian angels, this has already been done.
ROSE: I guess that is all I really wanted. I’m also wondering about one of my babies who I lost when he was very young. His name was Benny. Will I be seeing him when we get there?
ALLEGENTIA: Not first thing, but you will fairly soon. These innocent children who die before having an opportunity to make decisions to begin their soul growth on Earth are given the chance to progress in heaven. You will be able to visit and nurture him in the celestial nursery.
ROSE: I’m glad to have you confirm that. It will be wonderful to see how he has grown.
ALLEGENTIA: He has not grown. His resurrection awaits yours. You will get to participate in his upbringing. It will be very different than it would have been on Earth but he has the same personality. Everyone has a different road of development no matter where they grow up.
ROSE: Well, that is unexpected. I will, of course, be glad to see him but I thought he would be an adult by now. I thought my days of child rearing were over.
ALLEGENTIA: You need not be concerned. Benny will be in good hands as you go about your continued progress. You will participate, but his primary caregivers will be Progress World residents, angels, and humans who need parental experience.
ROSE: Well, as long as Benny is in good hands and I will get to take part, I feel better.
I was nearly seventy when I died and I still had so much I wanted to do, but did not get the chance. After all of the hard work, I finally had some time and money. And I am not only talking about gardening. I would like to have traveled some, but I also wanted to write a book, get serious with my painting, and, of course, spend time with the children and grandchildren.
ALLEGENTIA: You have lost the opportunity to do those things on Earth, but they (and many things just as satisfying) are still available in your future. Some you will be able to take up almost right away and others have simply been postponed. Many of your human ambitions will hold the same value for you and others will fade away. All of your cherished longings will be able to be fulfilled in time. Your talents remain. You have not lost your love of adventure nor of creativity. And, of course, all of your love for others is still intact.
It is good for us who have lived thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years, to be reminded and to sympathize with you who have such a limited vision of the cosmic panorama. Your possibilities are endless.
ROSE: I’m glad to hear I will get to do these things, but I suppose they will have to wait a while. I do know I need to make more progress; I know I am incomplete. Of course, I did a lot more than just raise my kids and enjoy my gardens. I’m embarrassed by some of the things I did.
ALLEGENTIA: I can see the positive results of your freewill decisions in your soul. I can only surmise what you, or any person, lived through based on the character and quantity of your various values. Your soul shows, and I can see, the relationship of each quality with all the others. For instance I see you created a fair amount of fortitude but not a great deal of cheerfulness. This tells me you either had a serious temperament or a fairly difficult life. Now I cannot tell if it was actually difficult by some objective measure or if you simply had a low threshold for stress. There are subtle differences in the character of the soul’s value manifestations. I have been at this a very long time and so I can guess by the nature of your fortitude you did indeed suffer some real difficulties.
Some people are able to face these inevitabilities with a casual, even lighthearted, demeanor while others are hardened by them. Everyone has to face some stress and strain in their life. And it is always better to face hardships with as positive an outlook as possible.
ROSE: Well, I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. My life was harder than some but not as bad as others, but I am still aware of my failings.
ALLEGENTIA: Everyone takes the essential totality of their life with them to heaven. We know it is uncomfortable for you to retain your bad choices but you would not be you without them. Every memory with intrinsic or latent spiritual potential remains. Everyone makes mistakes. People choose to ignore some things and to be uninformed about other things. This is understandable, there is a lot to sort out. And it did help you develop your personal moral code. You have a way of deciphering and deciding what is right and what was wrong. When you stepped over your own line, you felt guilty. This is an automatic reaction. Your guilt, or some degree of it, may or may not correspond to real transgressions. But you are accountable for anything you did with negative consequences to other people.
ROSE: I’m willing to take responsibility. I’m just wondering about my punishment.
ALLEGENTIA: If you did not have – or take – the opportunity to pay the price for your actions while in the flesh, you will in the next life. Any good you did became a part of your eternal soul. The evil you experienced stays with you so you can learn and grow from it. But we do not punish you. The best way to get through the negative is to be good. After you do, the only thing remaining is the good. Once the lesson has been learned the bad no longer exists. True, some need to learn some things more than once, but eventually most do finally see the right of it.
The past cannot be revised; you cannot go back and fix your wrongs. But by going forward with good intentions, and actively following through on them, you can counterbalance the negative. Change in your attitude changes your behavior which changes who you are.
ROSE: That sounds better, more fair, than I figured things would be. What do you mean by one’s “essential totality”?
ALLEGENTIA: Your brain was a physical thing and some of your more trivial memories will no longer be available since they were only stored in your brain. For instance, you will probably not have much use for your phone number, but you will remember what a phone is. On the other hand, whatever was stored in your mind or soul is intact.
You will remember everything of value but this is not to say you will have instantaneous or perfect recall. As you go through your first few years, your memories (good and bad) will not only become apparent but you will experience them with greater vividness than the way they felt in your old brain-mind complex.
ROSE: Does that mean I can spread out the consequences of my bad choices? I guess it might be good to get it over with but I am not anxious to face this making-things-right part.
ALLEGENTIA: You will have to deal with them but not all at once. We give you time to work things out. How long it will take depends on how a person lived their life, how much negative there is, and how willing they are to get on with this harmonization process. But I can tell you had a relatively valuable life. To deal with everything you did wrong, all that happened to you, as well as everything you wished you could have done, will probably only take a few hundred years. There are, of course, some people who followed bad choices with worse ones. They may take a few thousand years to get everything taken back in balance.
ROSE: I’m glad I don’t have to face all my negativity all at once, but a few hundred years sounds like an awfully long time to me. I am not able, at the moment, to remember all the bad stuff I did and thought, but I was hoping it would be a matter of forgive and forget and then get on with it.
ALLEGENTIA: It takes a bit longer because I am talking about more than just the “negativity” as you call it. There are three kinds of things to deal with: the unwise choices you made, the bad choices others made which affected you, and things you missed out on. Your soul shows you made a good start on living up to your potential. Evil – yours or someone else’s, can set you back and you will spend time sorting out these shortcomings. But, by far, the most time will be spent on what you did not get to do. You will soon begin to think of your early lifespan as not just your earth life but also the time you will be spending on the Progress Worlds.
ROSE: It is already beginning to feel that way. Anyway, I’m glad and relieved we’re going to heaven.
ALLEGENTIA: We are going to what is described as the “First Heaven.” There are many, many levels to heaven. If we counted every higher stage of existence you will experience, every major transition from one state of grace to another, we would have a very high count of heavens indeed. We are going to the next planet where you will continue to learn and grow and blossom into the beautiful personality you are. You must remember, God is Infinite and you are on an infinite journey which has just begun. As you succeed, you will ascend onto other spheres and higher levels of consciousness. Each one more interesting than the last. Each one designed to help you gain even more clarity of the divine nature and to help you become even more like Him.
ROSE: I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than going toward God. There were a lot of people who believed in hell, and I guess I was one of them.
ALLEGENTIA: As I said punishment is not the best way to grow.
As far as hell is concerned, you do not have do worry about it. Only a person who is morally and spiritually bankrupt will not survive. Only those who habitually chose those acts they knew to be sinful are in danger of not being resurrected. Since every person has freewill each person can arrange their own self-annihilation but there is no actual place set aside for misery and torment. God is Absolute Love and does not take delight in his children’s suffering. He is disappointed whenever a person ends their own existence, but he would never use such horrific methods to coerce anyone to choose the light.
ROSE: No hell! That’s a big surprise. We were all told that is where sinful people go.
ALLEGENTIA: Many organized religions make the mistake of cutting off your right to resolve and renew yourself after death; they make it a heaven or hell proposition. Remember, you were able to remake yourself on Earth and you still have the same opportunities to do so in heaven.
You’ve had successes which put the qualities of courage and confidence into your soul. And you have had failures from which you have gained valuable wisdom when you accepted them graciously. The opportunities presented when you were too young, confused, or weak to take advantage of them are still available. You still have them as part of your potential. Nothing of value, past or future, actual or potential, is ever lost.
ROSE: What I would really like to lose are my sins.
ALLEGENTIA: You have already dealt with some of them by your growth; they are relevant only as something you have overcome. But you still may have to deal with others. Your sins will be forgiven when you sincerely ask for it, but the consequences of your sinful behavior are still yours. Sin sets up a situation which is unresolved. The responsibility for bringing things back into order is yours.
As I indicated earlier, you are able to repair and replace your misdeeds with good ones. If you perpetrated real wickedness on another person, you will need to make direct compensation to them. People will have to be contacted. Communications and apologies will have to be made, and satisfactory resolutions will have to be decided upon. A change in attitude and behavior will have to be embraced. Reality is very malleable. Every act, good or ill, effects your nature and growth.
We angels will be glad to help you deal with this. Our motto is: “Cherish the service where the need is greatest.” Wherever someone is incomplete, and striving to live the truth, we are there. Whenever the soul cries out for guidance, we are there.
ROSE: I am getting a better picture of what’s in store. I’m still a bit confused but you make it sound like everything has been thought of, and I will be taken care of. Thank you for comforting me.