Whatever else occurs in the mystery that is the afterlife, growth is a key aspect.

A year following his death, Helena’s father, too reserved to be close to his daughter when alive, sat down beside her in a dream. He had two forms. He was both himself (so she recognizes him) and a huge white mountain. She knew that his true form was the mountain. When he told her not to worry—about him or about anything, she was filled with ecstasy. This replaces everything between them, she told me, and is the “true nature of our relationship.”

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Something happens when we are no longer in our bodies, no longer stuck in the negative aspects of our personalities. The dead mature, African shaman Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa says, in the book Twin from Another Tribe, he co-authored with Michael Ortiz Hill.

Many of those I interviewed during the research for my book on after-death communication experienced contact with the dead who had shifted from belligerence, rage, or alcoholism into benevolent and loving parents or siblings or partners. Forgiveness arose. Selfishness fell away, though sometimes this took years. An abusive father came in a dream long after death, ready to support his daughter for the first time and expressing his admiration for her.

At times this transformation must occur within the living too. My parents died in 1984. Large components of healing occurred among us just before their deaths, but I clung to certain resentments. Gradually, as I matured, these faded, so that now I feel only enormous appreciation for their gifts; their human flaws seem negligible.

For fifteen years Carla’s father’s Alzheimer’s had kept her from receiving the emotional support she longed for. She scheduled a psychic reading when she had no idea he would soon die. Her session, after his death, was flooded with his presence and support and love. After that, as though his dementia had never been, his reassurance and advice seemed always available to her. He helped her with issues involving her divorce; complex situations were resolved just as he said they would be. Carla told me her father gave her “the strength and perspicacity to do what I needed to do.”

Dementia and diseases like Alzheimer’s are of the physical body and brain. Once they are out of the picture, the essential nature is free to rise.

This quality of our true nature that emerges after death is best summed up with the single word “loving”. We humans can be quick to anger, to judge, to resent, and to wound those we love the most. The nature of loving in the afterlife, as indicated by both after-death communication and near-death experiences, excludes anger, judgment, resentment, and hurt. Only love matters to them now. Anything else is “nothing more than a row of pins” as one deceased husband told his wife when she worried about something she had done.

It is nearly universal for any direct connection with the afterlife to demonstrate this absolute and unqualified love. In fact, these visceral demonstrations of untainted love may be the primary gift of our contact with the dead.

Reading or talking about unconditional love is not the same as feeling its effects. Our response to such love is like a thirsty plant’s response to warm rain. We flourish under its presence and we are taught how to live and love more fully with each contact.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Watch for pre-ordering in July.
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