RETURN TO INDEX

GO TO CATHOLIC POPE CONFIRMS HEAVEN/HELL CONCEPTS DESCRIBED HERE

BELIEF, INTENT, AND FREE WILL

        It is not well known in the Western world that we create our own circumstances in both the here and the hereafter. In the "here", or physical plane, this creation sometimes takes years before our intentions take form. For example, an architect starts with a sketch of his intentions or ideas on a piece of paper. His beliefs based upon his education and prior experience guide his intent. Then after much toil and gathering of resources, the building he had in his mind appears. But in the "hereafter" or astral plane (our reality after death) creation is instantaneous. Our intentions within the framework of our beliefs, take form as fast as they flash onto our consciousness. So if your beliefs block your awareness of these creative abilities, you will assume that your surroundings are created by others, or at least you could believe that they are not under your control.

We have vast creative abilities. We can use this creative power as soon as we allow ourselves to believe it is true, both in the here and the hereafter.

Intent is the over riding creative energy in all levels of reality. (Remember "And God said, Let there be—") Using our free will and our intent, we gravitate to the level of reality that best suits our belief and experience. If at least some of our experiences in the physical life have not been totally centered on ourselves, with respect and love given to others as well as ourselves, we will be greeted at death with a host of friends and relatives, and later a loving and compassionate Being of Light (our personal Guiding Angel who has been with us since our conception) will provide us with an instantaneous life review in which we experience from the other person's perspective every encounter which we have ever had with another. This can be very rewarding if our life has been in keeping with the above description. Normally there is a mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant reactions by others in these encounters, and so we also get to experience the sadness and grief we have caused others. Since each "other" is an individual expression of God, we evaluate how we have treated God in our own life.

So herein lies the pleasant/unpleasant first experiences in the hereafter. You set the tone by the impact your intentions and subsequent actions have made on others all your life. Hopefully the life review gets better as you have aged and have learned better how to relate to yourself and others with more openness and love.

You are in for a variable stay in the astral plane, where using your free will, you gravitate through your intent to those of like beliefs. If your belief system has been based more on openness and love to yourself and others, you are surrounded with joy and light and you will be invited when you so choose, to progress toward further enlightenment.

However, dying with a belief system that does not include "life after death" means you could die and be completely unaware of the fact. This happens to many people. This can be very confusing since your thinking of friends and relatives will cause them to appear one after another as your intentions change, because you are drawn to them by these creative thoughts. However, they will not acknowledge your presence unless they are clairvoyant since you are in your spiritual or astral body which was released from your physical body at death. So you could wander as though in a dream trying to attract the attention of someone you know.

The degree of light or darkness surrounding you after death is an exact symbolic representation of the degree to which your life has been ruled by unconditional love, which is God. Complete absence of this presence in your life equals complete absence of light in the hereafter. This is the area or condition of "outer darkness". If you have been indoctrinated in a belief in Hell you may believe that this is where you are. This thought is all it takes to get you there, and you find yourself surrounded by all the negative creatures, fire and brimstone, etc. which you have been taught are what make up Hell. You and other souls who inhabit this lower astral plane create it by your combined thoughts. If you believe in eternal damnation, then you will feel you are trapped here forever.

But this is not true. If for one brief moment you wish you were somewhere else, you will be there, since wishing or asking is a creative form of intent. Or in your desperation you may start praying. Such a prayer is always answered immediately by a missionary angel appearing as a being of light. He/she will lead you into a lighter domain inhabited by those with more openness and love to themselves and others.

But let us assume that your belief system does not include knowing about asking for help. Then you may be in for misery for an extended period, since all those around you also believe they are trapped. However the Beloved Father of us all will not allow an eternity to pass without summoning help, which may come as another incarnation, or perhaps you will sense a relative or friend thinking of you in a loving way which will create a path into the light . Upon coming into the light, you will find that deceased friends and relatives have been summoned to welcome you home, and you will experience your life review. The only direct punishment you will receive as a result of your misdeeds will be your experiencing the pain and suffering you have caused in others, during your life review.

But despite God's intention to welcome you back into his loving arms, you may not be ready for this kind of love. In fact, if your world has been one of self-centeredness with little consideration for others, Unconditional Love can actually be painful. Your desire to move away from God's tormenting love causes you to move into a lower astral plane inhabited by other people who have already created such a world through similar beliefs and intents. Your presence adds to its expanse. You are not driven out of God's presence. This is an act of free will. Here you will find that being in the outer fringes of God's love is less painful than being in His presence. But after a period of time you may become restless and wonder what it's like in higher realms. This attracts teachers and guides who help you to discover in these higher realms the ever increasing presence of Unconditional Love, which is God. And you will start radiating this love as it grows within you.

Unfortunately, you still have unresolved situations from past lives which now come back to haunt you as your awareness increases. You realize that the only way to put them to rest is to go back to earth another time, with situations prearranged so as to give you the opportunity to make up for past shortcomings. You choose your new parents and the circumstances of your new life, or if you have not advanced spiritually, helpers will arrange for your benefit the circumstances which can bring out the best in you if you learn from them. But if you do not, new similar circumstances are arranged for you to re-experience the same challenges until you learn what you failed to learn before. If you have wondered why you keep having similar experiences such as failed romances, this is the reason. Lessons unlearned means lessons repeated.

Thus progress is made over many, many lifetimes, each subsequent one designed to take advantage of the lessons learned previously as your life becomes more and more based upon unconditional love.

Here then is the secret of all incarnations. We start out as a spark of the Divine which is unconditional love, and guided by the influence of our constantly changing belief system upon our free will and intent, we experiment with different life circumstances. We come into this incarnation not remembering who we really are, but with pre-arranged opportunities of rediscovering this wonderful truth.

Our religious institutions do humanity a great injustice by promoting belief systems based upon our unworthiness and fear of punishment rather than unconditional love. There is no unforgivable sin. There is no judgment other than a compassionate life review where we may evaluate our lives in the light of Unconditional Love. There is no eternal hell. We gravitate to the spiritual level that best fits our enlightenment, or lack thereof, with opportunities to progress through as many incarnations as it takes to allow us finally to remember: we have the potential of being complete expressions of Unconditional Love, which is God, and to work toward that end. Each religion has a Savior or Ascended Master who exemplifies the nature of God as being Unconditional Love, and in whose footsteps we are encouraged to follow. But instead we set them apart and worship them, thereby relinquishing our responsibility to follow in their upward paths all the way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Testimonial Footnotes: ( Jack O'Brien, jobrien@yournet.com)
A. One time I was asked in a telephone conversation about the early days of a school chum who was killed in WWII. I described his being a marble playing champion and my losing many of my favorite marbles to him. I sensed his presence as I was talking, and his absolute delight at my description of him. After the phone call, he asked where his younger sister was, whom he loved dearly, and who had died since his death. I realized then that he had been trapped in the circumstances surrounding his death since 1944. So I told him to think of his sister and she would appear, and encouraged him to pray for help in rising above his present self-made prison since he was not aware of his own bodily death. A later visit by him indicated that after all these years he was finally making progress into the light and he thanked me for my help.

B. On another occasion two matronly women appeared to me, apparently having been brought by their guardian angels, saying they were lost. Upon being questioned, they said they had recently been in an accident in Houston, Texas. So I told them that they must have died in this accident (or rather their physical bodies died) and I would help them find their way out of their darkness. They said that they had prayed and prayed to Jesus but nothing had happened. Then I asked if they had prayed for help from an angel. They said no, so I prayed for them. Immediately a being of light appeared whom they described as a glowing woman with wings. I told them to follow this angel who would lead them out of their darkness. They returned within a few minutes and said that they did not trust this angel and did not want to follow her.

So this was the reason that their prayers were unanswered. They did not put any faith or trust in a God of unconditional love, and had selfishly only paid lip service to Jesus in order to stay out of hell. This wasn't working. I explained that the angel would take them to a brighter place where their friends and relatives were waiting to welcome them. They departed again, but said they would be back and thank me if I was right.

True to their word, they returned shortly all happy and bubbly saying they were enjoying a reunion with their friends. Then one returned a third time asking how their friends knew they were coming, indicating a continuing lack of trust. I told her that while they were being led out of darkness their guardian angels had probably alerted their friends. So distrust in a loving God had kept their prayers from being answered and had almost caused their being stranded, possibly for a long time, in outer darkness.
-END-


CATHOLIC POPE CONFIRMS HEAVEN/HELL CONCEPTS DESCRIBED HERE
From Reuter News Service - Houston Chronicle, July 26, 1999


VATICAN CITY CITY - Forget the flames and the devils with pitchforks. A week after telling the Roman Catholic faithful that heaven was not up in the clouds, Pope John Paul II said Wednesday that hell was not a physical place either. Lest sinners think they can get off lightly, though, the pontiff said hell is for real and is something sinners bring on themselves.
"Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God, but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life," he said. "More than a physical place, hell is the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy," the pontiff said in a weekly audience. "So eternal damnation is not God's work but is actually our own doing."

Churches around the world are filled with frescoes depicting tormented souls denied access to heaven populating a hideous wasteland to be tortured and suffer for all eternity.
The pope described hell instead as "the pain, frustration and emptiness of life without God."
The Pontiff's end-of-millenium guidelines on hell came a week after he told pilgrims heaven was not "a physical place in the clouds, but a living and personal relationship of union with the Holy Trinity," and that a foretaste could be had on earth.
"If we are able to enjoy properly the good things that the Lord showers upon us every day of our earthly lives, then we have begun to experience the joy which will be completely ours in the next life." he told pilgrims last week.

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE

Compiled by Ruth Angela and Jack O'Brien jwob@alltel.net
from personal experience and from several sources including
www.worldtrans.org/lyssa/perspow.html ,
www.spiritweb.org/astral-planes.html,
www.spiritweb/Spirit/toraya-ayres.html
www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/tales-from-nature-kingdom-obrien.html