Lydia sat down at the computer that evening to send another email to the Yoga Ranch. Margie had retreated upstairs and she was alone in the living room with its shadows and the reflections on the computer screen. She was beginning to think of this as a special place of communication. Not just that she could write out the words as she thought through an issue, but that sometimes they seemed to appear on their own. As if her thoughts opened a secret door into another consciousness—a bodiless consciousness. As if, like she was doing now, thinking about this murderer, this Dale person, she could tune in to what might be happening to him, over there. She could feel a restlessness in her fingers, a blurring in her sight, as if the screen were a hypnotizing element that took on, went into...the words of another person, being, or whatever. She let it flow.
Of course there is a welcoming committee. How would you get around in this space without a little direction? But what’s really weird, if you really want to know, is the silence. Just space and silence. Movement, yeah. But that’s really weird, too. I’m still figuring that out and it’s been a while since I looked down and knew I’d never return to that mashed up thing. I mean, it used to be so serious, that death thing. Really scary. But look, this place is just full of bodies floating around bumping into each other and bouncing off again. Or just like, passing through one another. Cool. Can’t hurt anybody here. A relief, a real relief. You see, these ‘hands’ are just rays of light. These arms, legs, this whole body are just rays, like those old fashioned sunbeams humans thought were so great. I’m being rehabilitated, actually. Learning to think in ray talk. Kind of like mental hands. I guess the brain and body aren’t so much separated. Oh, it’s something humans could do down on earth if they concentrated on it. Here they’re working with my anger habit, helping me see some thought patterns that were giving me trouble. Right now, I’m told to communicate with whatever vibration comes in and try to analyze it. Colors have a lot of meaning and I’m beginning to see beyond the heavy ones that I came in with.
You remember writing in the sky? Airplanes leaving messages in white letters that stayed awhile, then dissipated? Well, things are pretty temporary, if you know what I mean. Things don’t become things just right away. Like down there. But if you keep the thought vibration going, kind of like boiling water, maybe, just letting them boil and boil, which takes a lot of energy, and concentration, eventually, you get a form. Here, you start making your own body this way. Only, you’ve really got to know what you want. Not just any old body. But before that, even, you’ve got to know what you want to do with it. What’s a body for? It’s like we’ve got these rays and we can just keep moving about and through other rays, but what’s the purpose? After a while, the idea comes to you that there’s a reaction going on, an interaction, you know. Took me a time to realize that. Maybe I wasn’t ready, or something. I guess I was learning to relax. I must have made it real hard for Them; they must have put me in a silence straightjacket or something. It was pretty lonely. I guess I was still kicking and screaming and making storm clouds so bad they had to leave me alone until I got tired of being alone. Strange, though, there never was any pain, or hunger, or thirst, or tiredness. Just a bit of rocking when I relaxed and quit fighting. Like a cradle almost. Rocking, rocking. Then it was like I could look around and notice the pretty colors, and it was like they began to stay around and take notice of me. It was OK. I wasn’t afraid. And the more I wasn’t afraid the more I could move here and there and sort of swing, yeah, like swing from this ray to that, with a sort of will power of my own. Make myself fly. I always wanted to do that down there, but never could. Here, though, it’s the way it happens. Kind of a gut jump, all the juices flowing as they will, or mind, gets the thoughts into action. How can I say it? Well, don’t know how much you want to know. Your purple inquiry is giving me blue shivers, like waves and waves bouncing off each other. But space is so vast here, I can step out of their way and they’ll go on and find another target. Maybe that’s the point? You’re after another ray being? Well, believe me, there are mansions and mansions and they can’t all be explored at once. I’ll keep your request in mind. And tell my little brother Mike not to worry so. Tell him it’s all OK and not to take life so seriously.
The words stopped coming and Lydia stopped typing. She stared at the screen, read words that came as if an email directly to her from... Cyberspace? The other side? Impossible, impossible, impossible. Some trick of her imagination, had to be. Chills ran through her body. She felt confused. The Ranch had writings describing the other side, after the soul drops its physical body and finds itself in the astral world. She must have gone into some subconscious trance and just written the dream she was having. She laughed. She’d file it in her journal, along with other purely personal thoughts. She printed it off, then saved it in her journal file. But she couldn’t get over the feeling that it was real.
Real or not, what did it tell her? That Dale had passed over and entered some kind of nice acceptance? Yes, a welcoming committee. But, didn’t he have to pay for what he did? More than just feel relieved he couldn’t hurt anyone, and feeling lonely? Did the dead ever learn to be sorry? He did say ‘they’ were helping him work on his anger habit, as if ‘they’ had a kind of psychotherapy, or psyche/soul therapy. Maybe ‘they’d’ help him face what evil he had done on earth? Or would he have to come back to earth for another chance to learn truth in interpersonal relationships? And just what were ‘they?’
Her thoughts shifted to her mother. What might she be learning over there? Would she ever be allowed to confront Dale’s form with her whys? Lydia sat there with the computer humming, and her eyes getting heavy wondering how rays really communicated with each other. She knew about energy fields around human beings. Certainly she believed that thoughts were energy. Believed, not really understood. What kind of an energy force were rays? Light seemed to her so weightless, so inconsequential. And energy seemed equated with power. But maybe she was mistaken. Jesus knew how to make his physical body weightless enough to walk on water. He knew himself to be spirit, not merely a physical body. Some people claim to be able to go out of their body and travel astrally. Could she have done that accidentally? Lydia shook her head.
She went back again to her mother and her last minutes of this life, wondering if she knew she was being killed. Maybe she didn’t even know Dad had been killed. Maybe she just lost consciousness in the middle of a thought and suddenly was in a strange place fighting and kicking like Dale described, and feeling alone in a silent space. Maybe she didn’t even know she was dead. Lydia tried to imagine the confusion that would bring. And how long would it take to understand?
Lydia wanted so much to go to bed. She could hardly find the strength to shut down the computer, turn out the lights and find her way upstairs. She forced herself into the meditation posture, willing to keep her back straight, willing herself to feel weightless, in space. How comfortable it would be to forget the body. But she wasn’t able to achieve that.
Instead her thoughts turned toward the world, so heavy with turmoil, friction, hurts, disappointments. Who in their right mind would want to stay, if they knew how to get out? So deluded are people that they really believe that if they just work hard enough, learn enough, sacrifice enough, practice whatever enough, they will gain what? happiness? It isn’t meant to be. Everything here is temporary. There is no stability. It is all movement, vibration, energy, opposites, first this, then that. Always. So what is it all for? Why is there life? lifetimes? Why is there Earth filled with people? What does God want? Those were some of the questions pouring into her mind as she sat there on her bed until Sid jumped up and purred so loud she had to stroke and pet, hold and love him. Is that it, Sid? God wants us to love one another?
The Return Page 14