God: “It IS what happened to her, as she moved deeper and deeper into the passage between physical life and the spiritual realm. As I said very early in our conversation, the experience is different for everyone in many respects—and there are some things that occur in every case. The ‘life review’ is one of them.”
N : But that life review sounds as if it could be painful. I mean some of the moments from my own life might be unpleasant, either because of something that I experienced, or because of what I now notice that I caused someone else to experience.
G : “Remember that you dropped your sense of personal identity with your mind, and with the thoughts you’ve held about yourself there, in the second stage of death. In the third stage, you merged with the Oneness.”
N : And that Moment of Mergence I stepped away from my last sense of personal identity with the individual aspect of being that I have called ‘me.’ I stood aside from ‘me,’ seeing ‘me’ clearly, but not identifying at an emotional level with the being that I was seeing.
“Now, as we return to our metaphor, you are in the third stage of death, you’ve passed through the Moment of Mergence, and as you now experience in fullness of core of Your Being, you see all that is in the ‘art gallery,’ all the experience of your life, and you can look at them objectively, as if you were flipping through a picture book, or watching a movie or studying a great work of art—which each experience is.
You study each moment until you feel that you understand it. Then you move on to the next image, the next moment, the next ‘painting.’
“In this way you move through and around the entire gallery; you make sure that you have seen the complete collection. Every moment is important to you, because you realize as you examine the individual moments of your life that those moments are what you used to create your experience of Self—and soon you are going to decide how you wish to re-create your Self anew."
N : I understand. But even knowing this is a metaphor, I have to ‘pick it apart’ a little. There is one thing I am not clear about. I thought I ‘regained’ my identity when I emerged from the Essence, when my ‘meeting with God’ was over. Otherwise, how would I know ‘who I am’?
N : Then how is it that I can go though this ‘life review’—take a look at all these pictures of moments from my life just lived— and not feel anything? I’ve done some pretty ugly things, I’m sorry to say. And a few nice things, too. How is it, if I have regained the identity that I shed in the early stages of death, that I don’t have any feelings of sadness or happiness or suffering over that?
G : “When your ‘meeting with God’ is over, you regain your awareness of the limited identity that you held in your last lifetime, true, but you do not move back into that identity. Rather, you experience your Self as much larger than that, much more unlimited.”
N : I’ve spent a lot of years in the theater, working in both community and professional theater in six states. So this is how I suddenly find myself thinking about what you’re telling me…
It would be as if I had stepped offstage after playing a role in which I had very limited abilities or skills, then took off my costume, changed into my street clothes, and stepped out of the theater and into the world as a fully capable and powerful being.
On the outside of the theater there’s a marquee display with flashing travel lights and photos of me in many of the key scenes from the show. I see myself in these pictures, in which I am grimacing or smiling or crying or shouting with terrible anger, but of course, I have no internal or emotional reaction to any of this.
I know it is not me —that I am standing there looking at these photos— but when I was inside, on the stage, the suffering and the pain and the joy that I displayed not only felt very real to the audience…it even felt real to me. That’s how good an actor I am❗
Still, looking at the photos now, I see how I might have played some of the scenes even better—or changed some scenes altogether. And so I determined to do that at the next performance. Then I’m on my way. First stop: the library. I want to know more about this character that I’m playing❗
G : “Bravo❗ That’s a very good analogy❗ This is very close to what you experience as you move through the Core of Your Being reviewing the ‘art gallery’ of moments from your life. And as you leave the Core of Your Being you DO in a sense ‘go to the library to find out more about your character.’"
N : But please tell me again, why do I bother? Why ever leave the Core? Part of me keeps wondering, even after all this explanation--why do I, why would I, ever leave the Essence? Why wouldn’t I remain immersed forever? Wouldn’t that be ‘heaven’?
G : “It is the nature of Life to express itself. That is what Life does. It cannot not do this, or it would not be. Now change the word ‘life’ in the above sentence. Notice that ‘life’ can also be called ‘God,’ ‘That Which Is,’ ‘the Essence,’ ‘the Energy,’ or whatever else you wish to call it. No matter what word you use, you are still talking about Life.
“In the process of self expression, Life quite literally ‘expresses’ Itself. That is, It pushes Itself out FROM Itself, giving birth to Itself as an aspect OF Itself, that it might Know Itself in Its Own Experience.”
N : And I am ‘born again’ and move away from the Core so that I—in your words, now—may ‘better come to Know’ what I encountered at the Core ‘as real,’ through the perspective of distance.
G : “Well, you’ve captured it perfectly. This is what the process of death—and birth—is all about. You are constantly moving to and from the Core of Your Being, that you might Know and Experience the true nature of Who You Are. You use distance to Know and to Experience the Totality IS the Totality, it experiences only the Totality, and none of it’s constituent parts.”
N : What if I can’t be any better than I just was❓ What if I have experienced total mastery in the life I have just lived❓ Then what❓ Will the cycle end?❓
“I have already described to you the cycle of everlasting life. Because you seek to re-create yourself anew, as does all of Life, you will move into the spiritual realm, in which you will come to know and understand more of Who You Are and who you choose to be,
then you will return to the Core of Your Being and back out into the physical world, traveling the same Corridor of Time in a different way, or a different Corridor altogether, so that you may Know in Your Experience what it is like to be who you have chosen to be.”