Will I Ever See My Mother Again

In a spiritual conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, a reader named Tom asks:

I just stumbled upon your website in my spiritual search and I am glad I did. Over the last 3 years I have lost both my parents and these events have made me consciously aware of my own expiry. I used to feel more than comfy with what awaits us on the other side but I am now more than scared than ever there may be nil. I judge I am looking for some comfort that my parents are ok and I will see them again ane twenty-four hours. Thanks.

First, my thoughts are with you, Tom, on the loss of your parents.

Ascension from Expiry

Both of my parents as well died inside the past few years. I wrote almost their passing in an article, "When Decease is a Commemoration."

It is very common for us to contemplate the meaning of life and expiry when our parents' fourth dimension of death arrives. Any our relationship may accept been with them, knowing that they are gone changes our view of ourselves. At that place is no longer an older generation above united states. Now, in a psychological sense, nosotros're on our own. At present we have to think nigh why we're here on earth, and about where we are headed in life and in our own eventual death.

So your spiritual conundrum raises at least two bug that confront us at the time of our parents' deaths:

1. Are my parents okay, and will I see them again 1 24-hour interval?
2. What does my parents' death hateful for my own life?

Allow's look at these questions in reverse order.

The changing of the guard

Beginning, this article is most when our parents die having lived out a reasonable lifespan, so that we, their children, are well into adulthood ourselves. I sense from the way you lot phrase things that this is your situation.

Every bit long equally our parents are live, even if we ourselves are well forth in years, there is a sense that the older generation is however nowadays and bachelor for u.s. to plow to. In an odd way, this is true fifty-fifty if they can no longer have care of themselves, and no longer have their full mental capacities. We may even be taking care of them. Simply bold they were reasonably practiced parents, even then nosotros take a feeling that those who took intendance of u.s., and who we turned to in trouble, are still here with united states of america—even if they may be hidden abroad in a deteriorating physical trunk and brain that prevents them from being fully themselves.

When our parents dice, the reality settles in that they are no longer here. Whether they were salubrious and with it correct upwardly to the terminate or spent years not beingness truly themselves earlier they died, there is a sure finality about death. The people who raised us and to whom we turned more times than we tin can count are gone.

This causes us to re-evaluate our own life and to realize, sometimes with a shock, that we ourselves are now truly the ones in accuse. There is no parental safety net to fall back on. Whatever nosotros make of our life, that'southward what it is.

And of course, though nosotros may have faced the expiry of friends and acquaintances, the death of our parents often hits much closer to habitation. It causes us to call back virtually "ultimate things" in a fashion we may not take thought of them before.

In short, whatsoever the circumstances of our parents' death, that upshot causes a paradigm shift in our consciousness, our sense of life, and our sense of ourselves and our identify in this world.

The lessons of death

I sense that much of what you lot are feeling now is not simply most your parents, merely near your own life, and its pregnant and ultimate fate.

Even though information technology can exist uncomfortable to reconsider and question things that seemed so sure to us before, this is both a natural and a spiritual part of life.

Ultimately, information technology is not good for usa to accept things only because that's what our parents instilled into us. Yes, good parents can be a bully influence for skillful in our own life. But as long as we are living on their borrowed strength and values, our life is not truly our own.

In a sense, the decease of our parents is a wake-upwardly call for u.s.. It is a bulletin from God, if you will, that nosotros must now live our own life, make our own choices, and be fully responsible for ourselves in a way that may never have seemed quite so real when our parents were still alive.

In detail, anything we accept accustomed automatically and without question, just because that'south what we were taught, is not a full and potent part of our own self and character. Beliefs and ideas that we have only and uncritically accepted from others are borrowed values. Perhaps in our parents' grapheme they were tried and tested in the crucible of real life experiences. Only fifty-fifty if nosotros ultimately have many of our parents' values, we must make them our ain by trial and testing in our ain life and experience.

In other words, no affair how fine and practiced the educational activity and example of parents, teachers, ministers, mentors, and so on may exist, those things are not ours until we have questioned them, tested them, tried them out, and hammered them into the shape of our own unique heed, life, and experience so that they are truly our own.

And of course, many of the states also have the feel of trying and testing things our parents taught us or instilled in us, and finding that they no longer fit. Many of us take the feel of replacing what we were taught as a kid and as a youth with different behavior and values that make more sense to us, and work amend in our own life and experience.

All of this questioning, testing, and working things out in our own heed is a healthy and necessary role of condign the unique individual that we ourselves are.

So as uncomfortable as is your radical questioning of issues of life and decease that used to seem so comfortable and solid to you, this is a necessary passage as yous make up one's mind for yourself what your own behavior, loves, attitudes, and actions volition be in this life.

One fashion to await at it is that in dying, your parents have given yous the gift of exploring life for yourself, on your own terms, and deciding for yourself what yous desire to believe and who you want to be as a person.

Though this tin be a scary and discomforting time, it can besides exist an exciting and audacious fourth dimension of renewal, discovery, and reshaping your life!

Where are they at present?

If what I've written then far makes some sense to yous, then perchance yous will understand why I believe information technology is actually function of God'southward plan that in the ordinary course of life, there comes a fourth dimension when our parents are no longer with us. For many of usa, this means we have to experience that our parents are gone.

But of grade, the questions still linger:

• Are they really gone?
• Where are they at present?
• How are they doing?
• Volition I e'er run across them again?

Though there are many more questions we ask ourselves when our parents die, let'southward await at these for now, and encounter if we can find some answers and some condolement.

Of course, we could debate these things, and debate over whether my responses to your questions are actually true. If y'all're in a doubting mode, please read the article, "Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?"

Beyond that, I would simply say, heed to your mind, and to your middle. There is more to life than logic and proof. There is the experience of the sages and deep thinkers of all the ages. And in that location is a response within our ain heart when we encounter something that has the ring of deeper truth.

So, sidestepping all the questioning, debate, and skepticism, for now I will simply requite you my responses to these questions.

Are my parents really gone?

Your parents are gone . . . and they aren't.

They are gone from this physical, material plane of life, and from this earth—and they will never render. There will be no concrete resurrection at some future Apocalypse. (See "Is the World Coming to an Finish? What virtually the Second Coming?") Your parents' bodies, whether buried or cremated, volition "become the way of all the earth" (Joshua 23:14; 1 Kings 2:two) The materials of which they were equanimous will "render to the dust" (Genesis iii:19; Job 34:15; Psalm 104:29) of the physical ecosystem from which they came.

And withal, your parents themselves are not really gone. Yes, you knew your parents through their physical bodies, their actions, their words. But your parents were not their bodies. Information technology was their minds and their hearts that fabricated them who they are. And those things are not physical.

The spirit of your parents is all the same very much alive. Their true self is nevertheless very much live. That'due south because everything that made them who they are is not physical, only spiritual. It is their loves and beliefs, their grapheme and their personality, their humour and their sadness, their wisdom and their silliness—and everything else that fabricated them the unique people they are.

These things tin never die.

What nosotros here on world call "death" is simply the removal of the real person, which is the spirit, from the physical torso that had housed information technology here on earth. From a spiritual perspective, physical death is the nascence of a soul from the womb of the fabric earth into the fullness of life in the spiritual globe (see "When Death is a Celebration"). And though we cannot encounter spirits with our physical eyes, they are every bit as existent and solid to themselves and to one another in the spiritual world equally our physical bodies are to us here in the physical world.

Your parents are still very much alive. And if y'all were close to them, and they cared for you, they are however present with you even if you lot are not consciously aware of information technology. In the spiritual earth, thinking about people brings their presence. If your parents are thinking of y'all, then they are even so subtly nowadays with y'all in spirit.

Where are my parents at present?

Hither'south the funny thing. Since your parents died within the past few years, they might be living a life very like to the i they had lived before they died. If y'all like, you can picture them living in a firm similar to the i they had last lived in before they died, and going on well-nigh their daily lives with one another and in their community.

Of grade, they will no longer be with the people they left behind who are notwithstanding alive here on globe. But they will be coming together and greeting old friends and family members who passed on before them. They volition be reigniting quondam friendships, and finding joy in reuniting with the people whose passing they had mourned while they were still alive on this earth.

To reply this question more technically, information technology is most probable that your parents are now living in what Emanuel Swedenborg called "the world of spirits." This is a vast region of the spiritual world situated between heaven and hell. It is where everyone who dies first goes immediately afterwards death. Some stay at that place simply a short time. Others stay for as long every bit the equivalent of a few decades here on earth. Everyone stays there as long as necessary to get their lives sorted out and to gain clarity virtually who they truly are in their real, inner cocky.

For more on the world of spirits and what happens to us after we die, please meet the article, "What Happens To Us When We Die?"

How are my parents doing?

During the course of their time in the earth of spirits, your parents will gradually abound younger in body, until their spiritual body—which is just as existent and solid at that place as our physical body is hither—regains its youthful strength and vigor. Practise you have pictures of your parents when they were immature? If so, that will give you some idea of what they are starting to wait like now.

Information technology doesn't happen all at in one case. But soon, they volition leave behind all of the frailties of age, and feel immature and strong once more! That's considering in our minds, even when we are erstwhile we are however young. Toward the end of his life, my own father forgot everything that but happened more than nearly ten minutes ago. Simply he would regale us with stories of how he met his helpmate (my mother) over lx years ago. He would tell united states of america over and over once again how she would put on her jeans and jump behind him on his motorcycle so that they could go for a ride together. "That's my gal!" he would say!

Now, I don't know if my father will become himself a pair of wheels in the spiritual world. Simply I wouldn't put information technology past him! If you lot tin picture show your own parents in their younger years, enjoying the pursuits and pastimes that they did in those days, then perhaps you lot can gain some idea of how they are doing, and what they are doing.

Of form, there'southward more to the spiritual world than fun and games. Your parents will now be opening up their hearts and minds in a way that they may never have been able to do fully while they were still alive in the textile world. Social strictures and obligations often suppress our full personality, expression, and joy of life here on earth. In the spiritual globe, those external strictures are taken away more and more than, until we can fully limited who we truly are, heart, mind, and soul.

Did you accept a glimpse of who your parents were in their heart of hearts? If so, then you can become some deeper sense of how they are doing, and what they are devoting their lives to now that they no longer have to worry about social community or money or death or taxes.

In short, assuming your parents were good people, they are doing better than fine. Every day they spend in the spiritual world, they are able to express themselves more and more fully, and live more than and more of the kind of life they truly love.

Will I ever see my parents once more?

If you're with me so far, then the answer to this one is easy:

Yes!

When it comes our time to die, and we go out behind this physical globe and enter the spiritual world, we will be able to meet and get together with all of the friends, family unit, acquaintances, and coworkers who have died before u.s..

How?

Simply past thinking nigh them.

As I said earlier, in the spiritual world, when nosotros call back virtually someone it causes them to be nowadays with us. Of course, it's actually a fiddling more than complicated than that—but there's no need to get into the complications now. In the spiritual world, when we recollect about someone and want to see them, it brings us closer to them. The very act of thinking about them carries u.s.a. into the same spiritual "space" that they are in, so that nosotros tin see them and talk to them.

And of course, the ones nosotros will call back about the most, and about want to see, will be the ones we have been closest to in this life. In the spiritual earth, there is not bad freedom to travel here and there, and to get together with anyone we desire to see. (It is also possible to get away from those we don't want to see.)

When our fourth dimension to die comes, it is very natural for us to think about the people we loved who have died earlier the states. And because we are thinking about them, information technology is very probable that they will exist the first ones to greet united states when we wake up in the spiritual earth.

From the cursory words in your spiritual conundrum, y'all seem to remember of your parents with love and affection. And I suspect those feelings are mutual. So I fully await that you will run across them soon after you lot die. You lot will then be able to spend as much fourth dimension with them every bit you want.

Where does all of this come from?

You lot may ask, "How can y'all speak almost these things with such assurance? Where did all this stuff come from?"

These are not my own ideas. I did non pull them out of thin air. Yes, I've spent many years contemplating the afterlife, and coming to some of my own conclusions.

I've also read many accounts of virtually-expiry experiences, and found them confirmatory of what I had already believed near the spiritual world. I even wrote a book about near-decease experiences almost twenty years ago, called Death and Rebirth.

Nonetheless, if you lot want the real story of the afterlife from someone who spent many years exploring that realm while nonetheless living here on globe, the book for you is Heaven and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg.

Are you a bit skeptical?

That'southward but natural.

For a little more background on Swedenborg before you take the plunge, run into: "Who was Swedenborg? What Should I Read?" This mail and video likewise offer links where you tin can purchase Heaven and Hell as a print or Kindle book, or download complimentary PDF and East-Book (epub) versions.

Beyond that, all I tin can say is: Read the book! Then determine for yourself whether the spiritual realm that Swedenborg described in vivid particular over 250 years ago makes sense to your mind . . . and to your centre.

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted past a reader.

For further reading:

• What Happens To Us When Nosotros Die?
• Who Are the Angels and How Practise They Alive?
• Where are my Children who take Died? Will I Ever See Them Again?
• Sky and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg
• Sky, Regeneration, and the Pregnant of Life on Earth

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Source: https://leewoof.org/2014/02/14/what-does-it-mean-when-my-parents-die-will-i-see-them-again/

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