What happens after we die?

This is a question that has been on my mind for as long as I can remember, and which continues to baffle me because it's obviously impossible for me or anyone else to definitively know the answer. However, my view on the afterlife has changed drastically now that I've given myself permission to think about it free from the confines of my Baptist upbringing. Accepting the concepts of reincarnation and past lives has truly been eye-opening to me because it has given me an entirely new perspective on... well everything, really. First and foremost, it has allowed me to get closer to the root of my OCD, which is why I started looking for answers in the first place. I had reached a point in my therapy where I realized that many of my health problems, both physical and mental, were a red flag for repressed trauma, and my research on the topic has helped me get a better understanding of where my OCD symptoms might be coming from.

I read an incredible book about past lives, Reincarnation: Past Lives and the Akashic Records by Lois J. Wetzel, that was full of fascinating case studies from the author's work giving past life readings. Note: there is a difference between a "past life regression" and a "past life reading." With a past life regression, you are hypnotized and experience the past life yourself, as if it was actually happening. When you get a past life reading, you allow someone else to access these memories for you and then verbally describe them to you, which is supposed to be less traumatizing. Anyways, I really resonated with these case studies because most of them were about people who were experiencing some sort of unexplained problem in their current life, but after learning about events from previous lives, they were able to begin the healing process. As someone who suffers from a chronic mental illness, I'm really intrigued by this link between past and present. There are some definite risk factors from my current life that have undoubtedly contributed to my OCD, but I've always had the nagging feeling that there was something more to it. I've even been questioned by therapists who ask, "Are you sure there isn't some sort of trauma that you haven't addressed that could be causing all of this?" It was only my recent stay at an inpatient mental health facility that forced me to dig deeper and face my fears instead of run from them.

One reservation that I initially had about past lives and reincarnation was that if I did exist in previous lifetimes, why don't I remember any of it? I have always been intrigued by accounts of children who can remember impossibly accurate details about a past life, but that has never been my experience. I was willing to believe that others had experienced reincarnation, but it never fully occurred to me that this type of "rebirth" could actually be the answer I was looking for, and not just an unusual phenomenon. It took hitting rock bottom with my battle against OCD to open my mind up to the possibility that I could still be carrying around scars from a previous lifetime. I haven't undergone any type of hypnosis or past life therapy as of yet, but it's something I definitely plan to do in the future.

In the meantime, however, I've also been learning what I can about what happens BETWEEN lives, and how that relates to the concepts of heaven and hell. Interestingly, a few years ago I read a personal account of a person who had a near-death experience and emerged with this radical story about where she was and what she learned about life. I brushed it off because it was too "out there" for me to take seriously, but when I started to research past lives myself, I encountered stories that were way too similar to this lady's experience to ignore the connection. So with an open mind, here's what I've started to believe:

Before we came to earth, we all existed in some sort of spiritual realm. There's some physics behind this theory, but you'll have to Google that for now because my one year of physics in high school didn't really prepare me for that kind of explanation. I hope I'll get to dig into it someday. Anyways, this place is our home. It's where we came from, and where we will return to when we die. Descriptions of this spiritual plane are very similar to what most people would think of as heaven. So this, of course, directly contradicts the Christian belief that there is a "heaven" and a "hell," and you must be a believer of the Christian faith in order to gain entry into heaven. I believe that we all* (before you sputter and say but Hitler! murderers! rapists! - hang on! I'll get to that, don't worry) return to the spiritual realm after our physical death. Here we recharge, and evaluate this most recent lifetime with spiritual advisors, who are souls who have reached a later point in their spiritual journey. We participate in this process because we consciously decided to life on earth to learn a lesson, and when we finish, we will return to the spiritual plane having grown as a soul.

But wait- if we have this greater part of ourselves who has been to this supposed spiritual plane and agreed to visit earth, shouldn't we remember that? Well, think of the theme of light vs. dark (very popular in my Sunday School days!) It's definitely a useful metaphor here- we can only appreciate the light because we have also been exposed to the dark. If it was light all the time, we wouldn't fully appreciate what it meant to be in the light, because we wouldn't know that any other type of existence was possible. So that's the same sort of reason why we agreed to come here. We have to experience the suffering that comes with living in a physical world in order to fully appreciate the euphoria that is the spiritual world. And, from what I've read, we choose not to remember this decision, or anything about our spiritual existence, because it makes the human experience real.

To me...this is a huge comfort. I've lived my whole life worried that I would do something wrong that would permanently damn me to hell. I've had crazy, realistic nightmares where it seems as if I'm actually there, and I always wake up gasping for air and panicking over the state of my soul. I've felt guilt ever since leaving the church because as much as I know it was the right decision for me to make, the fear of hell is so deeply ingrained in my soul that I felt like I was walking the spiritual plank directly into flames. I even envied those who appeared to truly believe in God and everything that the Christian faith stood for, because it seemed so easy for them to slide joyfully into heaven. What I didn't realize that by giving into my anxiety and constantly living in fear, I had created a personal hell that was entirely self-inflicted. It wasn't until I began to practice mindfulness and living in the present that I was able to slowly begin extracting myself from the snare of self-doubt. It's a long process, but it's so unbelievably freeing.

OK, I know this is a cliffhanger ending but I promise there will be a "Part 2" soon. It's late for me and I can feel my eyelids shutting!

Good night, world.
-L